Previously on Anatomy of Murder.
We wanted to come by and talk to you a little bit about Lisa.
Lisa had just recently moved to be with Paul Edwards.
I was told that you're friends with Lisa.
Yeah, we talked about her moving.
Oh, she was a detention woman?
Yeah.
Why?
She told me she wanted to move.
He's telling us that she packed her stuff and left and he was fine with it.
They was fighting.
Who's they?
The boyfriend.
What's his name?
Paul.
We noticed that he has cuts on his hand.
There were small amount of blood under the vanity in the bathroom.
I'm telling you up front, you're not convinced.
Our lead homicide prosecutor at the time said, you got to think outside the box.
Light the fire.
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murder.
We're talking about Lisa Spence, a recent immigrant from Trinidad who's now living in Broward County Florida, and she disappeared back on October 7th of 2009.
So police got involved, and it didn't take long before they started to suspect her boyfriend, Paul Edwards, of foul play.
If this was going to be a foul play, they wanted to find her.
So, after investigating this case for a couple of months, police now created an elaborate ploy to test Edwards.
They cloned Lisa's phone and they sent him a message pretending to be her.
We had fixed-wing aircraft.
We had, I can't even tell you how many unmarked cars, the U.S.
Marshals involved.
Everyone was set up, knew what we were going to do.
Everyone had their jobs.
And then it was simply placing that text and getting on the radio and telling everyone involved The text has been placed.
Stand by.
You know, this is a bait and surveil operation.
And by sending that text message from a phone cloned with Lisa's number, Detective Danny Smith was hoping to rattle Paul Edwards.
One of the things I was thinking is what he should do.
If he's innocent, immediately call me and say hey detective, I just got a text from Lisa.
She's fine.
That's what an innocent person would do.
A guilty person that knows they're guilty doesn't call the police.
Now, if you're going on the leading theory that Lisa was dead and her body was potentially dumped somewhere, they want to see if Edwards would see the message and go check out if the body was recently discovered or it's a crime scene.
Betting by following him, that could lead to a discovery.
But the entire team knew that was the longest of long shots.
After sending that message, police staked out his home and tailed him when he left.
Finally, we see Paul Edwards exit his mom's house and jump in his car and start driving.
It was odd because he was essentially driving in what I call a heat run.
So he did a lot of U-turns.
He did a lot of drive somewhere and then maybe a three-point turn. and then come back the other way.
He would go up and down the same street a couple times.
When you listen to what he did, for me, it sounds suspicious.
Why would someone leave their house and go nowhere?
So what was he doing now?
I felt that he thought that he was being followed.
Paul ultimately comes back home, and he's in for the night.
And we ended up calling the operations.
So, while you know, the mission is dismissed and all the agency members are going back to their normal jobs, the two detectives have to go back and determine that if any of the surveillance provide any evidentiary value,
Well, at that point, it's just good old fashioned start searching.
I mean, I'm always one to think about.
You might think that you have lemons, but maybe there's lemonade in there.
And I think that here now they have this swath of area to go back and look.
And just maybe there's a clue in there, if they look hard enough, or if they are able to retrace his steps and look very closely, that that just might be the thing in there that maybe hopefully leads them to Lisa.
We reviewed a video of everywhere he went.
Where are good spots? that you could dump a body.
And I know it sounds callous to say it like that, but we're looking for that.
A body could have been for now two months or close to two months.
Now, Paul Edwards went to several locations, but he didn't spend too long in any one place.
So you need to determine which of those spots could potentially be a crime scene, if any.
Now, police made a bit of an interesting move here.
You know, while Edwards was out driving around, he stopped at a house.
And they went to that house and they knocked on the door.
And his friend answered the door.
Paul drove to a friend of his house, knocked on her door and spoke to her.
We ultimately went back and spoke with this friend.
When I heard Detective Smith talk about that I kind of turned my head a little bit, because for me that's a bit of a risky move.
What do you think?
I think for sure.
I mean, right, because the obvious thing is that are they tipping off Edwards?
And the answer is likely yes.
Maybe Detective Smith did want Edwards to know that he was on his trail.
He did want him to get nervous and make a mistake.
Because essentially, if you're looking for a mistake to be made, you want to be watching it.
She remembered Paul coming to her house and said that Paul came by to install an appliance.
Now, this friend said that she didn't have the appliance.
She was looking to make arrangements and then she would call him.
So she felt it was a little bit out of sorts.
It was not exactly what she had planned which, in turn, made investigators feel a little weird about it.
So that was one stop that Paul made, but he drove around for a while that night.
In my opinion and again, this is just my opinion I think he was driving by to see are there police cars?
Are there crime scene vans and crime scene tape?
And I think wherever he went at that time, I felt he was driving to see if her body was found.
So with that you have to look at what are the locations that are conducive to quote.
Unquote a body dump site, which is in our world law enforcement prosecutors that is the terminology often used.
It's just a matter of getting out there and searching every day.
Scott, I'm sure that you know this too, and you have your own take on the areas that you find most conducive that you've seen before.
Now, I've seen two different types of body dumps, Anastasia.
The first being a remote location, minimal foot traffic.
You know, the kind that you could just walk up on or even unfortunately, at times, smell before you discover it.
And the next is the so-called drive-by dump.
And it's just as described.
You know going to an area like a side of a road, over an embankment, where you just dump a body.
And the rationale there is less chance you're going to be seen doing it.
Paul drove to an area in Miami Gardens, like a big open field.
There's a lot of trash out there.
It looks like a lot of people use that area to just dump. bulk items of trash.
And he drove probably within 100 yards of that.
Now, this is a big area.
We're not talking about any small plot.
And they started searching it, searching it for days.
December 16th, we've got our normal search team out.
And, as you can imagine, we're on about 15 or 16 different places that we've searched and came up empty.
After a while of hitting dead ends, they decided to use another tactic, cadaver dogs.
So this was just another day and another try, and I'm already trying to figure out the next spot.
And we had two human remains detection dogs out there.
And rather quickly, investigators got a hit.
We had one of the dogs run over to a 55 gallon drum, a barrel and then sit right next to it, which is their indication that there are human remains in or around that area.
Now, let's talk about that barrel.
It is an actual shipping barrel.
And depending on where you're from, you may or may not be familiar with them.
But I can tell you by being a prosecutor in Brooklyn and up here, there is lots of people from the various Caribbean communities here.
And these shipping barrels are very expensive.
And they are a common way to actually ship goods, clothing items back and forth between here and the various islands.
Now, that may be true of other places, too.
But culturally, it is very commonplace here.
The handler went ahead and put that dog away.
And then we deployed the second human remains detection dog.
And that dog did the exact same thing.
It is a large barrel.
Now, it's not a wood barrel like a beer barrel, but it is that size barrel.
And if you're not sure what that looks like still and you want to see it, you can go to our website anatomyofmurdercom, and you can see an actual photograph of the shipping barrel that we're talking about.
So at that point, we knew that we had human remains in the area.
But is this Lisa's final resting spot?
We just didn't know who it was.
And it's unfortunate, but there was a very good chance that this had nothing to do with our case.
Now, Scott, you know, you are Mr. Canine because you worked in canine for years.
So how likely is it that two dogs could be wrong?
These dogs are trained to detect the difference between human and animal remains.
They can work through their track and ignore decomposing squirrels or birds, while honing in specifically on the scent of a deceased human.
And here's where it sometimes becomes an issue.
Heat and humidity can reduce the dog's ability to identify remains, both through the interference caused by the dog panting in order to cool down and decrease the spread of the scent.
Remember, this is South Florida.
High humidity is the norm.
And that's why I believe a second dog was deployed as a confirmation.
But the real confirmation would come from the Emmy's office.
So we're not sure what it is.
We opt not to open the barrel and keep everything intact.
And then we called the Dade County Medical Examiner to come out with their investigators, take that barrel back to their offices in Miami and do a full examination.
Anicica.
So what would be the reason why investigators wouldn't open the barrel until they got to the ME's office?
It's to preserve any potential evidence.
Now again, they don't know what's inside of there and they don't know if this is Lisa Spence or someone else or, like Scott said, even if it's human remains at all.
But they're betting based on where they found it.
That's inside a barrel.
And now two cadaver dogs have hit on it, that it's probably going to be something that shouldn't be there.
So having to think about, if there's going to be a case, whether that is Lisa Spence or anybody else and, by the way, even if there's animals in there that shouldn't be in there, that's a crime too, potentially.
So they are making sure that this is handled correctly, that there is no contamination, that there is not movement that might impact evidentiary-wise why this person was placed in there or, more importantly, the way that they were placed in there, how they're found.
And so it is pretty standard when being done in the best way possible to bring it to a more secure place.
And in this case, let the medical examiners handle it from there.
The barrel was opened outside in their Solliport area.
It was documented.
It was porous. out onto a large tarp.
But it isn't what was in there that shocked the medical examiners.
It's what wasn't.
So the shipping barrel is brought into the medical examiner's office.
They literally have it out on top of a tarp and they open it and a body comes out.
And the first thing that you notice is there's no head.
It is a body and there is no head.
You know, you have to step back from the investigation and the science for a moment and just realize that this is a human body that's been decapitated.
Having to deal with that now for the medical examiner's office and for the investigators.
Yeah, of course ID is really important.
And trying to determine whether this is your victim, least suspense, is critically important.
You have to step back and say, you know, just how unfortunate and inhumane the situation is.
You know, every homicide, every body that we see, whether it's in pictures or up close and personal, it gets you in a different way.
But I can certainly tell you all from firsthand experience to see a human being whose head has been removed.
For me it was always one of the most shocking and troubling and the reminder that I can just never wrap my head around how awful certain people can be to another human being.
But you know again, for us, we have a job to do and it goes back to the evidence and that's how they looked at this here.
The body itself was not as decomposed as one would think, and I think it is as a result of the container itself And the fact that it was sealed.
It was protected by the elements.
So you were able to still tell it was a female.
There were at least 33 stab wounds on the chest area, the arms, the hands and obviously, massive trauma around the neck.
And it's the opinion of investigators and myself that there was potentially so many stab wounds that that is what essentially decapitated this victim.
You know Scott, we also always look at this, obviously from what it tells us about the actual crime, the person who committed it and even what the victim endured.
How do you see this one here?
The 33 stab wounds tells me a lot.
And it's the one word we use very often in these homicide investigations on a SIGA, especially when it comes to using a knife or a strangulation.
It's personal.
33 stab wounds to the point where the victim's head is severed from their body.
It's personal evil rage.
It's an obvious overkill.
There are so many stab wounds, so many unnecessary stab wounds, to commit this murder that this person is trying to do.
You have to think it comes from someone that they know.
You know I want to hit the pause button for a second on the investigation and just really look back.
As you know, if this is Lisa Spence and this is the woman that we've been describing and the woman that we've learned about through Detective Smith
What a horrible end.
I mean, a horrible end for any human being.
But we've met Lisa through the eyes of Detective Smith in this podcast and.
Knowing who she is and knowing about her family back home and knowing why she came to Florida.
To end like this if this is her is horrific.
What a brutal end to literally be left in a shipping container, stabbed multiple times, without your head.
And it is one of the cases that there's certain ones in my mind that I always think about that I will never be able to wrap my head around how brutal some people can be to one another.
What they need to do now, with the help of the medical examiner and, of course science, is can they identify these?
Remains as Lisa Spence.
We had to jump through many, many hoops to ultimately come to the identification.
So anytime we don't have Dental records which in this case we did not DNA is, nine times out of ten, a no-brainer.
However, the body inside that barrel was preserved from the elements.
It was also closed from the elements, which degraded the DNA.
You know, every situation is different.
And this is 2009 and efforts today would be different.
But in 2009, the science may not have been to the point where even the minute amount of DNA extracted from a decomposing body would have been as good.
We had to take extra steps.
We had to attempt to get DNA from the femur of the body, long tissue from various spots on the body, in hopes that we could find something that has not degraded to the point where we would be unable to get an identification.
So, as it turns out, the medical examiner's office was able to extract a sample of DNA from those remains, and they ran it through various databases.
Unfortunately, there was nothing in CODIS, knowing that Lisa had never been arrested for a specific crime, that would enable us to have her DNA in CODIS.
I wasn't surprised about that.
So then, if we're now going to see if we can actually identify this person as Lisa Spence, now investigators need to go to step two.
Now, when we searched The resonance that's shared by Paul and Lisa, we found that there was not one item that belongs to Lisa there.
Not a hairbrush, not a toothbrush, not a shampoo bottle, absolutely nothing.
So we were unable to find any potential match through there.
So every way they're looked, they're hitting additional roadblocks.
And remember, this woman is a recent immigrant to this country, so her friends and family, the people that they might be able to get her belongings from, they're not here.
But now let's go back to who it is that's investigating this case, Detective Smith.
We already know that he's thought outside of the box in terms of moving this investigation forward.
So he's not going to let something as...
Simple as he can't ID easily, stop him in his quest.
So from there we had to start working with familial DNA and meet with Lisa's mom son, daughter and father in Trinidad and obtain their DNA swabs.
Mitochondrial DNA is inherited solely from the mother, and that means that the person's remains can be matched with a mother or a maternal grandmother, a sibling, a maternal aunt or uncle, or even with more distant relatives, as long as they belong to the maternal line of inheritance.
So if there's no reference DNA on file, better chances to get a reference sample directly from the family.
Now remember, all of our agencies work for the government, so there is basically red tape involved in everything.
The first thing you have to do is go to your supervisor and say so Lieutenant, we're thinking about taking a trip to Trinidad and Tobago, and here's the reasons why we think we should go.
The questions were, why do you have to go?
Well, we have to get DNA swabs.
Well, can you have somebody from the FBI go there and get it and then send it to you?
So there's two things.
One, how much safer and more secure and no chain of custody issues if he goes and gets it himself.
But also, if he goes there, remember, that's where Lisa is from.
And not only where she's from, but it's also where Paul Edwards is from.
So he can go down there and do a bit more investigation while he's there.
And ultimately, this is one of those things where we need to sit down with the family and we need to try to solve this thing.
You have an opportunity to be face to face with a family member of a victim and you have the opportunity to learn as much as you can and have them also understand where you are in the investigation.
Because just imagine how many questions They would have.
And they're not used to the system in the U.S.
The criminal justice system in the U.S. is different than anywhere else in the world.
So having to explain the process to them, I think, is the right thing to do.
And I think it is the important thing to do for the family.
As we don't want to speak to a suspect on the phone, we want to look in that suspect's eyes and see what's going on behind those eyes.
It's the same with the family.
The family wants to be able to look in my eyes and see if I'm sincere, and see if I'm genuine and see that yes, we are here.
We are going to solve this.
I think it was an easy decision for the lieutenant to approve the trip for Detective Smith and his partner.
This was my first and last time I'd ever gone outside the country for any case.
We... got there and were treated like royalty by the authority over there in Trinidad.
They got us a driver.
They supplied us with a cell phone so we could communicate with whoever we had to communicate there in Trinidad.
Unfortunately, their computer system isn't as advanced as some of the computer systems that we have here in the States.
So a lot of it was just rifling through papers and they gave us carte blanche.
He was going to see this thing through and wanted to be involved and be in charge, hopefully for the betterment of the case.
I remember meeting with the family, and the house that the family lived at was much different than what I'm used to or any of us are used to here.
It was a smaller home.
There's no air conditioning down there and it's very, very hot.
But all the homes have flats in them to allow all the breeze to come through.
So that's basically their air conditioning.
And they had, I couldn't even tell you how many people that lived in that house.
Can you imagine this scene?
The detective is in a foreign country.
He's in a house full of people.
What's racing through his mind?
And then what's racing through the family's mind?
They... not only had friends, but they had extended family.
There was a house full of people.
And I've always found it the right thing to do to be as upfront and honest as I possibly can.
He has to tell him what he thinks, that Lisa is dead, but can't be sure.
For the family, I can only imagine they must be wondering, wait, what?
How can you not be sure?
They would have so many questions and emotions.
The family had to sit there and listen to me give them essentially the worst news that one can ever give anyone.
I did tell them, this is what I think.
This is where I think we are in the investigation.
And unfortunately, I do believe that the body that we found is Lisa's fence.
The family was so gracious and appreciative of The work that was done and the fact that we didn't hide anything from them.
This investigator is making the effort to come from Florida into their country to talk to them and show how much he wanted to help find Lisa.
I think it was a two-way street.
They're saying, we know this is terrible for you too.
Thank you for everything you've done.
Really, really phenomenal family.
And whether it's going to be her and not, in that barrel.
It just seems to me that they must be the type of people that really appreciated the extent that he was going to to work on their behalf.
I had to then get their DNA and I was able to get one additional piece of information.
When the body was recovered, we were able to locate some toe rings, and those toe rings were photographed and I took those photographs with me to Trinidad.
That's never a good thing to have to show property of a loved one to someone.
I was able to show those toe rings to Serlene, her daughter, who she's really close with.
Serlene said, yep, those are my mom's.
Those are my mom's toe rings.
I know.
I just saw them when I saw her last.
And while the DNA sample has not even been transported back to the States for examination, you have a firsthand acknowledgement on items found on the remains in that barrel.
We can never use that as the official identification, but it's not like you're talking about a singular gold band on someone's finger.
I mean, this is a toe ring and it's pretty specific.
So, yeah, I think they all know in their heart of hearts that this was going to be her.
And when they got back as I'm sure all of you out there have already guessed those DNA results came back as a match.
Through DNA evidence, detectives were able to confirm the decapitated body in the barrel was Lisa Spence.
But on top of that, remember, they had that drop of blood that they found in their rental car.
And that came back to Lisa Spence.
It's a rental car.
How else could it have gotten there if not by someone who rented it?
Which links it right back to Paul Edwards.
So, while Detective Smith and his partner were in Trinidad and Tobago, in Lisa's home country, they wanted to dig into Edward's past and they knew exactly where to go, and the information was important.
We contacted British constables that work in Trinidad and Tobago to ask if they had any in-house documents or information available, And they were able to tell us that he has active warrants in Trinidad.
And one of the warrants was for something called malicious wounding.
And it's not a term that we use in the U.S., but what's your take on malicious wounding?
It's basically an intentional assault.
Even here in the United States we call different felonies different things depending on where the case is being prosecuted.
But just think about what that actually means.
Malicious, which talks about the way it was done, equating intentional.
And the wounding is the result of the assault.
So really, that's what it is.
It's a felony intentional assault.
It was explained to me that it was a situation where he stabbed a girlfriend multiple times.
Here's a guy who was stabbed before and not only stabbed, but stabbed a romantic partner.
So unfortunately, we're starting to go down that domestic violence road.
As far as he's concerned with his history,
So Detective Smith felt like he needed a little bit more to connect not only to the remains in that shipping barrel, but could anybody else identify that shipping barrel itself?
Now, Paul kept his thumb on Lisa.
Really watched who she hung out with, dictated who can come over and who can't.
Well, Lisa had a friend who was one of the few people that were allowed inside that house.
She was one of the few people allowed inside their house.
Just think about that for a second.
You're not even allowed to have your friends over.
Your family already isn't with you because you have picked up to leave your country to be with this person.
And now he won't even allow you to have friends or anyone else inside your own home.
When I'm thinking about this, I think about how lonely Lisa Spence must have felt.
But when we move now to what they were able to get from her friend, how very fortunate that she was the one who was allowed inside.
Investigators were able to show her a picture, essentially of not the actual barrel, but one that is identical to it, and was able to tell us
Yes, I've been in that house maybe a month or two before Lisa went missing.
I remember seeing a 55 gallon drum that looks exactly like that inside their house.
Now, that isn't going to get you anywhere by itself.
And yes, they are used commonly to ship back and forth.
However, she saw one that looked identical inside the house.
And guess what?
When the investigators went in and looked for Lisa's toothbrush or something to try to get some DNA, they didn't see any such barrel.
That makes it even more interesting to me.
Right now, there's no doubt in my mind, Paul did this.
He's guilty.
I want to go after him.
So this investigative folder, Anastasia, is getting very thick.
They're really connecting the dots.
The timeline is fat.
What's your take?
Is this a case that you'd file right there and then?
I say I'm going to court.
There were two phones basically mirroring one another.
Basically, wherever he went, her phone is too.
And now there's no trace of it at all.
The analysis of the phones was huge.
And I have to give credit to my partner for being able to do that, because my ability with technology like that is not where I guess it should be.
So when you look at all of the evidence, I think now you have enough to prosecute.
At that point, it was the middle of April 2010 and I was able to take all these little things, all these circumstantial things, all this physical evidence and put it together and get probable cause for an arrest.
I grabbed the guys in my unit that had worked so hard on this case and we walked right up to the front door, knocked on the door and said you're under arrest.
And I have to say, it was a wonderful feeling.
Almost as good as calling Lisa's family and saying, he's arrested.
He's in jail.
This story isn't done yet, because Edwards is still adamant of his innocence.
And he tells police that he didn't kill Lisa, but he says he knows who did.
Edwards, through his legal team, said the person that actually killed Lisa Spence was her new boyfriend.
They, meeting the defense team, put it on the boyfriend.
Now, all of you may be saying, wait, we haven't heard anything about a new boyfriend.
And you haven't because really, it wasn't even relevant in the picture up until then.
Now remember Edwards and Lisa Spence.
According to friends and family, had really been on the outs and their relationship had been deteriorating for some time.
And while she was still physically with him and living inside the house, she had wanted to move on for some time, but he just wasn't letting her go.
So she had begun a new relationship with a new boyfriend.
And that really wasn't a surprise to anyone.
And from the beginning, Edwards, whenever asked the few things he did say, he said, it's not me.
It's this other guy.
I was able to alibi her very new boyfriend.
But the defense was, if anyone did it, it was the new boyfriend.
Paul had nothing to do with this.
Detective Danny Smith interviewed him early on in the investigation.
And when his alibi checked out, they moved on.
But they knew it would likely come up again.
Just think about that for a second.
So forgetting all those other pieces of evidence that we talked about, right?
So you have the boyfriend that you know that she's trying to leave, who we know is controlling, who we know doesn't want her around anyone but him.
And then you have the new guy in her life, the one who she wants to be with.
You tell me right there, who is the more likely candidate for murder?
And then you start to look at the other dots and they're all leading back to one.
And that's not the new boyfriend.
It's Edwards.
We hear something or see something and go oh, that doesn't make sense or that's suspicious and we need to dig more into that.
So a red flag to me is literally using common sense and saying that doesn't seem right.
There's no such thing as a done deal.
And because investigators know it doesn't mean that the jury is necessarily going to get it.
Remember, you just need one person who thinks that that might be a reasonable possibility that hasn't been disproven.
And then that's it.
It's game over.
You don't get that conviction.
And I think that you need to realize that what actually makes it into the courtroom sometimes goes against what we know as far as the big picture outside.
But look what the defense team was working with.
What else did they have?
We have no fingerprints at the crime scene.
We've got nobody placing him with the barrel at the crime scene.
We have blood evidence, but it's not blood evidence on the defendant.
So there was still a very good, but still a very circumstantial case.
I'm sure the legal team for Edwards was thinking you know, we need to find a way to show them that our client is innocent.
And what else would they have?
You all might be thinking about well, we know he's done this before, because we know that he stabbed another girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend.
But guess what?
That can't come into the courtroom.
This is a situation where we were unable to use his prior bad acts.
We were unable to tell the jury that he stabbed his girlfriend, that he was abusive to his wife, his estranged wife, that he was abusive to Lisa.
So all these things that we were able to uncover unfortunately were not admissible in court, even as a prosecutor.
To say that there's a pretty good reason for that is that you can't be convicted based on things you have done in the past.
That yes, even if you have done something very similar, you need to be convicted for that crime, based on the evidence they bring into the courtroom.
Now, sometimes we're allowed to bring it in under certain exceptions, modus operandi.
If there's something so specific about it that we say that it actually goes to prove identity.
But just prior, bad acts that are pretty general, you're not allowed to bring in, because then the jury might right away say well oh, he's done it before, he's done it there.
And that's just not what our justice system allows.
Beyond a reasonable doubt.
And at certain points, you're right, the defendant does not have to put on a defense.
The state has the burden of proof.
I don't disagree with that at all.
This appeared to be a distraction.
It's trying to throw doubt in the state's case.
And albeit mostly circumstantial, the prosecution luckily had some very solid evidence to counter all the limitations.
The best piece of evidence, I'm going to say it was a tie.
I'm going to say the cell phone records, coupled with that one spot of blood that came back to Lisa Spence.
That was on the rental car that we were able to pull.
So at the end of the trial, the jury rendered their verdict.
The jury was out for around three hours, if not less.
It was a very quick verdict.
Paul Edwards, guilty of the murder of Lisa Spence, sentenced to life in prison.
There was jubilance on the part of the family.
They were.
Some were speechless and some were outwardly pumping their fists, and there was a lot of emotion, a lot of emotion i definitely will never forget.
After that verdict was read the relief of the family.
It was almost as if a two-ton boulder was taken off their shoulders.
So, seeing how this investigation unfolded and all the work that was put in by both sides prosecution and law enforcement
Anasika, tell me what the feeling is in your cases when you were in the courtroom, getting to the end and the finish line and bringing justice.
There's no other feeling like it, you know, and everyone reacts differently.
For me, it was always mainly relief because, again, there's no good outcome here.
Right.
You know, Lisa Spence is never coming back.
And Paul Edwards is spending the rest of his life in jail and deservedly so.
Right.
But there's nothing joyous about that for anyone.
But it's incredible relief.
Because her family has gotten answers.
You think about all the investigators that put so much of their energy and time in, and every person that was looking for answers.
And it's just this relief that all that effort paid off.
It was emotional.
I had a flashback and the entire case and everything that was done and all the people that helped basically flashed in front of my eyes.
And I thought about the dogs and the U.S.
Marshals and the airplane and everyone, all the detectives, helping out and really working toward a common goal.
Doing this work, that is the reason that you do it.
Wrapping up a case that you have put so much energy and time into.
When you get that final answer, it's just incredible relief.
So it made me feel proud more than anything.
I heard the verdict.
It felt good.
That's for sure.
In thinking about this case, something that Detective Smith said, you know, really resonates.
He says that so often, you know, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
But for him in this case, it was like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.
And the fact that he was able to pull the right needle out, well, I think about Lisa Spence.
Lisa left the only home that she knew, left her children behind, hoping to build a future in a new country with a man that she thought she knew.
A dream shattered in the most violent way possible at the hands of a man who took her life and discarded her like garbage.
She was this woman in many ways in this country, all alone, and while she didn't have her family, fortunately for her she ultimately had Detective Smith.
Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder.
Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original, a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media production.
Sumit David is executive producer.
