Episode 318

24:31Mike Boudet:Jason elaborated that he dug the hole in an attempt to fix a broken septic. But when he returned home from jail, Jamie was gone and the hole had been filled in. Look underneath the shed, too. Under the shed? Under the shed? Look under the shed, too, for some reason. I don't know. Has that come up in a conversation? No, but I heard something. I don't know, nothing. I just looked under the shed. Now's not the time to say, oh, nothing. It might be nothing. I know, right. Right? Might be nothing. But if you heard it, it doesn't mean that it's true, but you're living here. The day he was released, Jason said police were already at the house looking for Jamie.

25:12Mike Boudet:David and his girlfriend were there, who Jason claimed stole some rather interesting items that belonged to him. When I got inside, all my stuff was gone. Pretty much. I mean, I have my TV still and my video games, but... What was missing? Okay, my DVR, I have a DVR for my security system. It's gone. All my cameras are still there, but my DVR is gone. Have you heard what happened to it? Nope. Pissed me off. Okay. My DVR is gone. All my calls are gone. I mean, a bunch of my tools. I mean, I know what he did. Since I went to jail, he went through my shit. Took my shit. Sold it. Yeah, made money.

25:49Yeah.

25:50Mike Boudet:Nearly all of Jason's things were gone. Not just his home security system, but his clothes, suitcase, and even his bedsheets were missing. After about an hour of speaking with him, Jason gave authorities consent to search the property. As for David, he had a checkered past of his own. The now 42-year-old had been in and out of jail since he was a juvenile. Dating back to 1995, David managed to rack up charges including grand theft auto, burglary, and many, many more things. David's troubles with the law started to ramp up a year before Jamie disappeared. In 2015, David was arrested for unlawful possession of two firearms.

26:39Mike Boudet:During a traffic stop, he was pulled over for driving a stolen vehicle. When police searched the car, they found a.44 Magnum revolver and a pump-action shotgun. As a result, he served 12 months in prison and was released around the time he moved into the Kenmore home. With that being said, there was much more evidence authorities had already obtained concerning the potential link between David and his sister Jamie's disappearance. Information that investigators weren't willing to reveal until they got a chance to speak with David themselves.

27:36We'll be right back.

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28:08Mike Boudet:In early June of 2016, 27-year-old Jamie Haggard mysteriously vanished from her home in Kenmore, Washington. When she failed to pick up her boyfriend from jail on Friday the 10th, phone calls and texts went unanswered. A week later, her father visited the home she shared with several others but found no trace of Jamie. After reporting her missing on June 17th, the police search for a young mother came off as an inconvenience more than a priority to Jamie's loved ones. Days quickly turned to weeks, until nearly a month later when authorities finally acknowledged her disappearance publicly. Without the family's knowledge, investigators had been actively gathering information behind the scenes.

28:59Mike Boudet:An early interview with Jamie's roommate, Jason Nolte, ultimately painted a dark picture that curiously lacked critical details. Fights, tensions, and violence were just a few of the red flags early on. One name came to mind out of the mouths of nearly every person in Jamie's circle, and it made it hard for investigators to ignore it. That name was David Haggard, her own brother. Shortly after his so-called friend Jason threw him under the bus, David was brought in for questioning. While he sat across from three detectives in an interrogation room at the Kings County Sheriff's Department, he was asked to take a polygraph.

29:45Mike Boudet:Without a lawyer present, David agreed. But in retrospect, maybe he shouldn't have. So, I went through my charge. You didn't pass your test, did you? Okay. This is what my computer algorithms tell me. Okay. that means probable deception indicated, meaning that there's indications that you've not been truthful with us. Okay? David can be seen in the CCTV footage struggling to comprehend how he failed his polygraph. You can almost see the gears turning in his dumb head. He doesn't appear to be reading the graph on the page in front of him as much as he is thinking of what to say next. I don't know.

30:30Do you ever know her? but I know men in your position that have been under suspicion due to certain stances and they're denied and denied and denied but in the end, the fucking truth comes out one way or the other and let's just face the legal side of this thing what's the crime of disposing of a woman that ODs I have no idea it's fucking gross misdemeanors I have no idea sir so I'm telling you that because I don't want you or anybody else overly freaked out about an OD death and guys panicked and got rid of the body. You guys keep saying she's dead. You guys know something that I don't know? I don't even know that she's dead.

31:14Well, we do know a lot of things about her. She's the latest to believe that she's no longer with us.

31:23Mike Boudet:Now, what would lead authorities to think such a thing? Surely Jamie's home life was extremely toxic, but maybe she just needed some time to cool off and get away from all the drama. To be clear, we were still working this case as though she could still be alive. It was a two-pronged approach. So one approach was, okay, if she's deceased, we need to find her remains. If she's alive, we need to find her. According to David, the last time he saw Jamie was on June 9th, when she allegedly walked out of their home and got into a car with a Mexican man. I'm not even going to go through this, man. I have nothing to do with my sister.

32:06Nothing to do with her disappearing whatsoever, man. I love her to death. Where the fuck is she? I don't know where she's at. I don't know where she's at. I don't know what the last six months of lifestyle she's taken on with all these brown people. I don't know the Mexicans that she's been hanging out with. I don't know any of that shit. In the last two months, I fucking cut her off, pretty much. Is a purse in your house? No. Is a phone in your house?

32:29Mike Boudet:No. David, who's obviously racist, claimed to have no idea where Jamie or her phone was. Whether he was telling the truth or not didn't really matter, since investigators were currently filing subpoenas for the phone records of various individuals. They'd find out soon enough, that's for sure. One of the things that we're doing today is we survey search warrants on a variety of phone companies, including your phone, including Jamie's phone, including some other people's phones. The reason I say this thing's going to be done today and solved today is because we're going to know where she's at today.

33:10We have to clear the people around her from suspicion. And you're, unfortunately, very difficult to clear.

33:17Mike Boudet:According to David, he left a short time after Jamie did. But when he came home, he noticed a fire smoldering in a burn pit in their backyard. When I got home, there was a fire outside the cider grass store. It was put out. It wasn't totally put out. It was a smoke home. I've seen it. That raised the tradition to me. I didn't know what that was about. I've been thinking about that ever since this fucking investigation started taking off. Other than that, I don't know anything else. Why is everyone like that's relevant? Because it was just, because you guys keep asking us about that backyard and about why we buried or, you know, what we buried and burned there, you know, it's just weird.

34:03I don't know. It seems like something I should say to you. Well, most guys would have a standard burn file, right? Well, yeah. You don't get burned next to the house. Yeah, you don't get burned next to the house. So are you saying this is something different? Yeah, I was totally flabbergasted. It was in the hole that we had for the septic that's been messed up there. So we got out of the trench line. That's how that hole yard got tore up to begin with, because the septic was fucked up. Septic or sewer? Sewer. Yeah. Sewer was fucked up. Piting was fucked up. So I got there. Like I said, it was weird.

34:34Carly showed up right after me, and I even said something to her, you know, like, this fucking bullshit burning right next to the house for, you know? She's kind of pissing me off, you know. You didn't think anything I would have done. Whose fire was it? I thought it was Jamie's. I thought Jamie was on fire. What day was that? That day. The night. Yeah, the day. The last time you saw her? Yeah.

34:54Mike Boudet:While David admitted to filling the hole, he seemed to have trouble answering whether he or Jamie lit the fire. Kind of a weird thing to not remember, huh? The more detectives asked about it, the more upset he became. I'm telling you right now, I don't know where my sister is. If I did, I would tell you. I would tell you. If she OD'd in front of me, I would tell you. I don't know. I don't know. Did you get in a fight with her on the last time you saw her? No. The day before we were fighting. Did you turn physical? No, not any more than no. Well, what does that mean? I mean, yeah, I mean, it was physical at first, but I was just getting to the truth of the matter.

35:39I mean, I was just, you know, on top of her. But it was nothing, there was no fucking violence or anything. The cops came there. I know that. And the cops checked her out. And I was fucking cleared. I didn't do anything to her. 24 hours later, though. 24 hours later, she wasn't at home. She was gone all night. She was gone all night. I guess we'll find out when we get the phone rings today. Yeah, we'll find that out.

36:04Mike Boudet:Without being asked, David decides to bring up the bathroom incident himself. where he allegedly attacked Jamie and tied her up in the tub. If you hadn't already guessed, his story was much different than his buddy Jason's. David goes on to tell detectives how his sister tried to kill herself that day before she went missing, by swallowing a bunch of pills, allegedly. The cops come, and at this time I'm dealing with my sister. She's in the bathtub. But the whole time I'm thinking that she's taking a bunch of pills. And I know she, I don't know what pills that she takes, but I know she gets some gnarly fucking stuff.

36:44So I'm not sure, you know, I went from rage to empathy here. And of course, they didn't call the cops. They should have called the cops. And I get her to fucking throw up or I'm threatening to stick my finger down her. Because my little sister, she'll bite my finger out. So she's mad at me, you know what I'm thinking. I get a spatula. She said, no, I'll throw up. You know, I was going to take her to the fucking shower. I get her in the shower. I'm on the phone with Carly and King County Sheriff's are walking up. So I go back to the bathroom. And at this time, the bathroom door is not open anymore.

37:15It's partially shut. I open up the door. Now, here's this girl that was supposed to be took a bunch of pills, was laying in there in her fully clothes. At one point, the tub was filling up, and I realized that the little stopper that stops the water was up. and I put it down and I slapped her on her arm and said, not on my watch, James. You better stay with me. What the fuck is... So when they came in, they said, we got an anonymous call that an anonymous person received the text message. The only one I sent the text message to was Jason. Backs up my theory that they're playing fucking games here.

37:51He's playing it. He's a manipulator here.

37:54Mike Boudet:Notice how he doesn't bring up the photo of Jamie tied up in the bathtub and detectives don't bother to ask. Speaking of suicide, they were curious about a note they'd come across during one of their earlier visits to the home. So my partner just texted me this picture of a note that you left on the garage for your girlfriend. It's a suicide note in my reading of it. So I'm sorry to get married. The suicide note made out to David's girlfriend Carly was written days before Jamie vanished. Police had already learned that on June 6th, one of his closest friends found him in the garage with a chain wrapped around his neck.

38:38Aside from his sister going missing, David had plenty to be depressed about.

38:44Mike Boudet:I mean, by all accounts, his life was pretty much shit. Maybe the suicide note meant nothing, but at the very least, it certainly indicated the poor headspace David was in leading up to Jamie's disappearance. Meanwhile, Detective Kathleen Decker and the major crimes unit were already inside the home searching for clues. I think he may have put her potentially in the crawl space. We didn't find any evidence of that, but if she was wracked, we wouldn't have found any evidence of that. We did have two HRD dogs work that property, and both dogs, independent of each other, did have a behavior change at that crawl space point in the bedroom.

39:27We also had a mattress leaning up against the wall there that had some pinpoint drops of blood on it, which may have been what caused the dogs to react the way they did.

39:38Mike Boudet:Kathleen Decker was brought on the case early on. Originally cutting her teeth as a homicide detective, she later became an expert tracker and processor of outdoor crime scenes. That's actually the reason I was brought into the Jamie Haggard case to begin with was because of my familiarity with search and rescue resources and my familiarity with the process of how you organize and coordinate and get a team together to do a search. And that is why I was asked to participate and help Detective Bartlett, who was the lead detective at the time that Jamie went missing. In her 34 years plus with the Kings County Sheriff's Office, she earned her reputation by helping solve some of Washington's most high-profile cold cases.

40:29Mike Boudet:In other words, if anyone was going to find out what happened to Jamie, it was her. After failing to find any substantial evidence inside the Kenmore home, Kathleen directed her team's efforts outside as they prepared to excavate the backyard. In fact, that's why we're only out of your house today. Sure, so we're going to check it. We're going to be checking it with the equipment. We're going to be doing it with the cadaver dogs. We're going to be covering that base today, 100%. And if she is found out there, somebody's got something to do. You know you're not under arrest, right? I haven't done anything, my sister.

41:08Do you understand you're not under arrest? I'm not under arrest. Okay. Well, let's get out of here then. I hope you're right, Dave. I wasn't there. But in the end, if she's somewhere because she OD'd, I would assume that at this point you got the message and you need to tell us. Did she die under other circumstances? No, it'll come out.

41:31Mike Boudet:When David asked for a lawyer, technically, that's it. Interview over. At least, it should have been. But, he keeps talking. And just like his buddy Jason did, he mentions the name Scott Barnes. Where's Scott at? We got other teams doing other things. You want to tell me the story about Scott? No, Scott needs me checking. You're suspicious of Scott. Yeah, really.

42:07They were already looking into Scott.

42:12Mike Boudet:But fact that his name came up certainly raised a few eyebrows. Despite what they suggest to David, authorities have no proof that Jamie's dead. To make matters worse, the only thing clear was that David, Jason, and Scott we're all liars. It really was difficult for us as we're trying to push this forward dealing with people that by nature lying is so normal to them that it just happens and so a lot of what you hear isn't factual a lot of it might be lore a lot of it is rumor speculation so you have to really sort through all of that to get at what is truth and what's factual. During this period, bodies were turning up left and right across all of northern Washington, and a lot of them were women.

43:08Mike Boudet:After a severed foot was found inside a recycling bin in Seattle, authorities arrived to find even more body parts in the remaining trash bags, including an arm, a leg, another foot, and a woman's head. About a week later, additional remains were discovered in a different trash can nearby. We are confident that it is connected to last week's homicide investigation, which was only about three blocks away from where we're standing right now. The autopsy suggested that the woman was somewhere in her late 20s to early 40s. Eventually, she was identified as a local nurse and young mother, but it wasn't who you think.

43:53Mike Boudet:In this case, 40-year-old Ingrid Lyne was lost, a mother of three, a nurse at Swedish First Hill. She was reported missing Saturday in Renton. Almost exactly two months before Jamie vanished, the body parts found inside the trash cans were confirmed to be those of 40-year-old Ingrid Lyne of Renton, Washington. Luckily for David, Ingrid's killer, a man she met online, was already in custody. Still, the similarities between Ingrid and Jamie were chilling. If nothing else, it spoke to the dangers women in this area were facing at the time. During David's interrogation, detectives decided to push a little harder.

44:39Mike Boudet:They brought up a few other cases. Specifically, two women found stuffed inside suitcases the year before. Jesus, man. Last year, we found two fucking people in suitcases because their friends panicked, didn't know what the fuck to do with bodies, and folded the chicks up in suitcases and dumped them. Jesus Christ, just call us and say, you know what I'm saying, just fucking deal with it. Authorities had no reason to believe these cases were connected, but they did offer their theory on what they thought had happened to Jamie. Here's what I think happened to her. I mean, it's really only two scenarios.

45:17She can go beat someone and they're slapping the house. Somebody freaked out and fucking had to get rid of her. Or somebody beat the fuck out of her and killed her. Whether that happened to your house or not, I don't know. But the crime lab's going to figure it out. Yeah. In the end, you're not passing the polygraph. The simplest polygraph we could design for a man like you in your position. One that you absolutely should pass. I don't want to talk about the polygraph anymore. Okay, let's talk about that. If you want to be done, you can go on.

45:57Mike Boudet:I don't want to be done. They didn't have enough to hold him. and after asking for an attorney a second time, the interview was forced to end. While heavy machinery dug up the soil at his residence a few miles away, David was ordered to stay away from the Kenmore property. For the next several days, Kathleen and her team combed through piles of burnt trash and debris, searching for any shred of evidence that might lead them to Jamie. Tonight, King County detectives are continuing to look for a missing Kenmore mother of two. 27-year-old Jamie Haggard disappeared around June 8th, and they are calling it suspicious.

46:39Mike Boudet:The major crimes unit worked day and night at the Kenmore home, using their backhoes to tear up every square inch of earth. But after days of relentless excavation, the only thing they turned up was a pair of burnt construction coveralls. reeking of diesel fuel. Those search efforts really didn't produce a whole lot of clues or information that was going to be terribly helpful. The burned clothing was certainly odd at the time that we found it. We didn't know what to make of it. And that diesel smell was interesting. So we took those items as evidence because they did not fit. There was no readily explainable reason for them to be there.

47:27So we seized those as evidence. We took photographs and just kind of noted it.

47:33Mike Boudet:When the scene was finally cleared, David was allowed to move back into the home. As investigators widened their search across both Snohomish and King County, tips from the local community started pouring in. So we spent a lot of time following up on tips, people who saw someone who looked like Jamie or they thought it was Jamie seen at this place at this time there were a lot of rumors and speculation amongst the people that she associated with as to what had happened to her I hey I heard a rumor that she was cut up in a chipper hey I heard a rumor that she was thrown in the river hey I heard so we had to follow up on all of these as best as we could to determine if there was any validity to them.

48:23Meanwhile, we're also conducting numerous searches, trying to find her if in fact she was deceased.

48:32Mike Boudet:Investigators chased down all these leads, but found nothing. So this week they searched in and all around Arlington after getting several tips that she was spotted there. But detectives say it wasn't her. So they are asking everyone to be on the lookout. And while it's great that a lot of people have been sharing her photos on Facebook, detectives are asking you to call 911 or Crimestoppers if you have any real information. They're spending a whole lot of time tracking down rumors instead of dealing with actual facts and people they can interview. Now, last Friday, deputies searched her property, but they came up empty, even using a backhoe to sift through the piles of trash in the backyard of the home and are recently filled in whole as well.

49:16Mike Boudet:When the phone records finally came back, authorities learned that on June 9th, 2016, at 1.05 p.m., David's girlfriend received a text from Jamie. It was aggressive, demanding that David leave the house before the weekend was over and that it better be clean before he was gone. The tone was completely out of character for Jamie. and even stranger, the text misspelled David's girlfriend's name. When authorities brought David's girlfriend in for questioning, she revealed that at around 8.45 on the morning of June 9th, Jamie walked through the door of the Kenmore home and confronted her and David.

49:58Mike Boudet:According to her statements to police, Jamie screamed at David, told him things were going to be different and that he should either get out, of her way or, quote, get on down the road. David's girlfriend also explained that she left the home a short time later to drive her child to school, leaving Jamie and David alone in the house. In piecing together their timeline, investigators also learned that Jamie called her boyfriend in jail at 9.32 a.m. that same morning. The call lasted roughly 15 minutes, where Jamie was heard finalizing her plans to pick him up the following afternoon. That was the last time he heard from her.

50:45Mike Boudet:From the time she spoke with her boyfriend to the time David's girlfriend received the text message, there's over three and a half hours of radio silence from Jamie's end. When David's girlfriend returned to the home at around 1.30 p.m., Jamie was gone, and David was in the backyard. We received information from David's girlfriend, Carly, that she had come home and found David out in the back burning something or doing something with fire in the area where we had found those burned clothes. So that kind of fit. We still didn't really know what that meant. And today I don't even really know what that was all about.

51:30But I believe it is important. It's related. it's relevant. I just don't know how it fits in the puzzle.

51:37Mike Boudet:When David's girlfriend approached him by the burn pit, she told police that he said Jamie started the fire right before she walked out the door and left with the unidentified Mexican man. David's story would later change altogether by allegedly telling other witnesses that there was no Mexican man and instead, Jamie walked off on foot on June 9th, never to be seen again. There were some inconsistent statements that David had made about when he had last seen Jamie. He just seemed to be a little bit all over the place. And it was really David's inability to keep his story straight that caused David the most problems.

52:23Mike Boudet:As for the fire, this wasn't something Jamie was known to do, let alone in the middle of the day. Something else that stuck out as strange to David's girlfriend were the items Jamie left behind. He had left behind some personal effects that most people wouldn't leave behind. her, it was like a purse, there was a phone, her prescription, medications, those kinds of things. It just seemed odd that she would not be coming back for those items. And so that piqued our interest. David's girlfriend recalled seeing Jamie's phone on the kitchen counter. But by the time police finally searched the home, it was no longer there.

53:08Mike Boudet:Weeks later on June 23rd, Jamie's sister also received a strange message. The person on the other end claimed to be Jamie, stating that she was fine and just needed some time to figure things out. But the message wasn't sent from Jamie's phone. Instead, it came from Jason Nolte's device. It was still behind bars. Weird. Jamie's sister wanted to believe it was her. While her family continued searching, Jamie's father posted videos to his Facebook daily, pleading with his daughter to come home. Sitting here at the desk, drinking a little glass of whiskey. Had a nice dinner. Good night. Miss you, Jamie.

53:56Mike Boudet:I love you, honey. The clip shows Jamie's father watching an old western with the caption that reads, Doors unlocked. Jamie. Honey. Unbeknownst to Jamie's loved ones and the general public, evidence was still surfacing, most of which pointed to none other than David. A friend of his girlfriend eventually came forward and told investigators that on June 9th or 10th, she witnessed David at a car wash in a nearby town of Woodinville, driving Jason Nolte's Acura. And with him in the car was his buddy, Scott Barnes. Meanwhile, Jamie's father continued to show up for his daughter, holding her missing persons flyer up for the local media cameras whenever he had a chance.

54:49I will find you, Jamie. I love you. Dad is coming, and I'll never stop.

54:55Mike Boudet:Weeks turned into months. Headlines of Jamie's disappearance became few and far between. The public interest in Jamie's case inevitably dwindled and was soon overshadowed by the hot new whatever it is in the news. Probably some local broadcaster bitching about Trump. Anyway, roughly one year after she was last seen, authorities were able to secure a second warrant to search Jamie's property. And in May of 2017, the yard at the Kenmore home was dug up once again. This time, they focused on a few areas left untouched during the initial search. A narrow patch of dirt near the back fence. Shovels hit earth, cadaver dogs circled the perimeter, while a backhoe tore into the ground.

55:49Then, a hard clunk.

55:53Mike Boudet:The machine jolts to a stop, and investigators exchange glances. The operator steps down to join Kathleen and her crew, standing at the edge of what's buried beneath the surface.

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57:07Mike Boudet:Jamie Haggard's disappearance in June 2016 left more questions than answers. When she failed to pick up her boyfriend from jail, her family knew something was wrong. Investigators zeroed in on three men. Jamie's roommate Jason, who was known to be violent towards women. a local biker named Scott, and Jamie's half-brother, David. All three had been on law enforcement's radar long before Jamie vanished. All of their stories were filled with bigger holes than there were in the backyard, the only common thread being their willingness to point the finger at each other. There's no honor amongst thieves, they say.

57:52Mike Boudet:Burn pits and ditches dug for a do-it-yourself sewage repair quickly became the focus of the search. All that was found was a pair of men's coveralls burnt and reeking of diesel. When the excavator's bucket struck something during their second search, they found nothing but planks of wood and an old TV buried in the dirt. Who the hell buries a TV in the dirt? What the fuck is wrong with these people? In hopes that maybe they would find her somewhere in there, that didn't happen. Meanwhile, Jason Nolte, Scott Barnes, and David Haggard remained suspects. But without a body, law enforcement's hands were tied.

58:36So we would constantly offer up opportunities for David to meet with us, to have conversations, to have phone calls. Sometimes he would engage, other times he would not.

58:47Mike Boudet:For nearly two years, the investigation went nowhere, except in circles, and the case lingered in limbo. That is, until one sunny morning in May of 2018.

59:06Mike Boudet:It was the morning of May 9th, and along the desolate stretch of road that makes up Route 522, a team of four city workers had just started their normal trash cleanup along the interstate in Snohomish County, Washington. After hopping out of their van, the group starts jabbing at the earth with their litter pickers and grabbing claws to gather fast food wrappers and other debris strewn across the freeway. Who are these assholes that tossed their burger wrappers out the window? Seriously, get some fucking manners. Anyway, after making their way south through the shoulder of Downs Road, the workers eventually spread apart to cover more ground.

59:51Mike Boudet:As one man makes his way to a nearby field, he notices a small carry-on suitcase resting in a patch of overgrown grass at around 7.15 a.m. After hauling a few discarded tires nearby, he reaches down to pick it up. And to his surprise, it's heavier than he expects. Still, he manages to drag it roughly 10 feet to the roadside and leaves it by the guardrail. It wasn't put in a bag and I just left it out there. I don't want to touch it. No particular reason. I just didn't carry it on. After about two more hours of cleaning, the crew hurls what they think are the last bits of trash bags into the trailer.

1:00:37Mike Boudet:By now, a few of the crew members had already gotten back into the van, ready to head to their next location. But before they did, the man remembers he'd forgotten one last piece. That old suitcase. I noticed the luggage was pretty heavy. and I had my picker, litter picker, and I kind of disturbed it. And as I picked it up, it just ripped apart. It just clicked into my head that something was wrong there because of the amount of work that was involved into packaging, whatever was in there. I immediately got on my radio and contacted my lead driver, and I said to her, I really hope this is not what I think it is.

1:01:24but I think this is a body inside of this. She goes, you gotta be kidding me.

1:01:31Mike Boudet:After radioing his supervisor, the man crouches down to the bag again, and his curiosity gets the better of him. I opened it up and I saw the hair, and I said, oh crap, something smells in there. I ripped it apart just to see, you know, hoping to see a carcass of a deer or something, possibly a dog, and I opened it some more. And we left it alone and called the sheriff's department. After nearly vomiting from the stench, the worker runs to the van where he joins the rest of the crew while they wait for the police to arrive. Within minutes, the area was swarmed with sheriff's deputies. Once the perimeter was secured, they made their way towards a suitcase and started peeling back the layers.

1:02:21Mike Boudet:The first was a black trash bag with a distinct blue plastic tie. Inside it was commercial-grade construction wrap. The third and final layer was a burnt red bed sheet partially stained with blood. It's at this point that authorities know this is no dead dog. Instead, they're looking at a pile of human bones inside the bag. At the point that I learned about this, I just knew it was Jamie. I just knew it was her. Whoever this person was, it was obvious they'd been out there for a while. But preliminarily, making an identification seems impossible. Not only because they'd been subjected to the elements for what appeared to be months, if not years, but the skull and other various body parts were missing.

1:03:13I believe that there were parts of her hands and feet that were missing. She had been dismembered. She had been burned. There may have been some disarticulation that occurred too just naturally from the decomposition process.

1:03:29Mike Boudet:Also in the suitcase were several pieces of melted hard plastic, along with a necklace attached to a small round pendant. Once the remains were transported to the medical examiner's office, The autopsy results didn't yield much information aside from what investigators already knew. Only from a partial pelvic bone were they able to eventually determine the gender. While the female Jane Doe had an age range of 24 to 44 years old, there was still a great deal of work to be done. So we basically had to peel back everything and look at every single thing that we could to determine if it had any forensic value.

1:04:15Could we get anything from any of this? Fingerprints were going to be out because of kind of how it was all compressed and it was just a mucky mess. We talked about DNA extraction. There was human hair. Could we get DNA from the hair? So we had discussions about that. It was decided the best opportunity for DNA is going to be just bone extraction from the femur that was in the suitcase, which is what we ultimately ended up doing.

1:04:46Mike Boudet:DNA testing would take several more weeks. While waiting for the results, Kathleen Decker revisited the evidence locker several times. After laying out the burnt items on a stainless steel table, she placed a series of photographs next to them, searching for any clue that she may have missed. In one police photo taken during the domestic incident the day before Jamie vanished, she's seen wearing a pendant necklace. In another, taken inside Jason's room, were red bedsheets seen covering his mattress. After comparing the images to the items found in the suitcase, they appeared to be a match. But because they were so damaged, investigators had no way to be sure.

1:05:38Mike Boudet:In cases like this, DNA is everything. And the bone fragment analysis was their last hope. When the results were finally returned, they confirmed the grim truth. Jamie did leave her home, but only after she was murdered, dismembered, incinerated, stuffed in a suitcase, and left to rot by the interstate. In details today, we learned the remains of a missing mother identified yesterday were found inside a suitcase. When Jamie's remains were positively identified in July of 2018, you would think that's it. Case closed. Authorities had their suspects. Surely they had enough to charge at least one of them with murder, right?

1:06:26Well, not really.

1:06:30Mike Boudet:Even though Jamie was the confirmed victim of a brutal homicide, investigators still had a pretty hefty burden of proof to overcome. Luckily for Jason Nolte, he was behind bars at the time Jamie was last seen. But did he help facilitate a plot to kill her before he was locked up. We told Jason right from the get-go that the best thing that ever happened to him was the fact that he went to jail for a crime he didn't commit on June 8, 2016, because he literally was physically incapable of having killed Jamie. He was in jail. Okay, fine. But what about Scott Barnes, the hell's angel, the one everyone keeps mentioning?

1:07:15Mike Boudet:Allegedly, he was in favor of getting rid of Jamie before he and David were seen scrubbing down the Acura at the car wash. Were all three guilty? Or did David act alone? Scott Barnes, yeah, he was definitely a character to be concerned with, in part because David was saying, hey, Scott did it. Well, okay, that's great, but we need a little bit more information. Why do you say that? You know, give us something besides the fact that Scott's a bad dude, that he's crazy violent. You know, I need more than that. So we were always open to that being a possibility. And we had to try to eliminate Scott as best we could.

1:08:00And the only way you can really do that is through interviews, you know, potentially polygraphs, those kinds of things and evidence. I mean, is there any physical evidence to link Scott Barnes to Jamie's murder? And there really wasn't. Everything kept coming back to David in the Kenmore house.

1:08:22Mike Boudet:Something else investigators were forced to consider were the ongoing statements from Jamie's own family. Her sister in particular outwardly expressed her belief that David had nothing to do with it. Sure, he had a long rap sheet and short views, but so did all his friends. He and Jamie also had repeated arguments and sometimes physical altercations about their living situation. But according to the victim's sister, that didn't mean that he killed Jamie. In her eyes, David was a good man and a good brother, despite his troubled past. Let's face it, no one wants to believe that a family member could kill one of their own.

1:09:04Mike Boudet:Denial is more than just a river in Egypt. It's one hell of a drug. But despite the incriminating text messages, the red bedsheets, the fires, and all the other stuff, all this evidence was circumstantial. Unfortunately, when someone turns up dead, it doesn't matter what you think you know. What matters is what you can prove in court. If this case was ever going to be solved, investigators had to get creative. Not by playing a missing person's card game, but by finding something concrete, something substantial. They had to fight fire with fire. This is a horrible case. I mean, Jamie was very tragic.

1:09:50She had two daughters and, you know, has a family that cares a lot about her. So something like this is heartbreaking. And, you know, to get a little bit of closure to find at least her remains, but we still have a lot of work to do because we still need to find out who's responsible for this.

1:10:04Mike Boudet:Unable to charge David with murder, investigators started looking at some of the other crimes he was suspected of committing. About four months before Jamie went missing on February of 2016, he allegedly broke into a mobile home in the town of Duval and stole a refrigerator and other appliances. Later that same day, he returned to the mobile home, crawled underneath the trailer, and let two cushions on fire, causing it to burn to the ground. Then, just days before Jamie vanished, David was suspected of another fire. On June 5th, he allegedly broke into a construction yard where he and Jamie's father worked in the nearby town of Woodinville.

1:10:47Mike Boudet:According to Jamie's father, David had easy access to heavy machinery there, but also materials like commercial-grade construction wrap, for example. You know, the kind that Jamie's body was found in, in the suitcase. During this incident, he allegedly used a$140 ,000 forklift to steal a commercial welder by loading it on the back of his truck. He then proceeded to dump gasoline into the forklift's cab before setting it ablaze. Ultimately, David's girlfriend and his roommate Jason both ratted him out to police, claiming David bragged to them about the fires, but he was never charged. In Washington?

1:11:33Mike Boudet:Imagine that. Not long after Jamie's remains were identified, investigators received another tip, this time from David's uncle. According to him, the same day Jamie went missing, David called him and said he was hiding out in an abandoned barn. When investigators revisited the area where Jamie's remains were found, they noticed a dilapidated barn less than 100 yards away. After combing through the abandoned structure, they found another burn site, a melted gas canister and a black trash bag with blue plastic ties, consistent with the one they found in the suitcase. These were all pieces of a much larger puzzle, But so much time had already passed.

1:12:24Mike Boudet:The longer investigators waited, the more time David and his friends had to potentially destroy more evidence. Not willing to let that happen, Kathleen Decker submitted her probable cause affidavit. And in October of 2018, David was arrested for arson. Roughly one year later, right before he was set to be released, his charges were upgraded to second-degree murder. Today, prosecutors charged Jamie's older brother, David, with her murder. They say the siblings who lived together had a history of violence. Twice, police dug up the yard at the home they shared, searching for clues after her disappearance.

1:13:04Friends and roommates say David threatened to kill Jamie and beat her up repeatedly, at one point hitting her hard enough to knock her out.

1:13:12Mike Boudet:It took roughly three years to charge Jamie's half-brother with murder. But a charge doesn't always mean a conviction. In the meantime, authorities were forced to explain why the hell their investigation took so long. All the witnesses were very suspicious of David, but we had to get to a point where we actually had probable cause to feel that he was actually responsible for the murder. Although a trial date had been set and David was behind bars, investigators were far from finished building their case. Over a year later, in December of 2019, Kathleen Decker made one last visit to the evidence locker.

1:13:55Mike Boudet:She wasn't interested in bedsheets. Instead, she wanted another look at the burnt plastic fragments found in the suitcase. Early on, investigators suspected that these may have been pieces of a cell phone, but it was so badly damaged they assumed it was useless. That's when Kathleen spotted something. A tiny section of what looked like a melted motherboard fused into a piece of shrapnel. So we were stymied for a little bit of time until we were able to identify someone through the FBI that was able to provide us that ability. And we were really happy when we heard that there was someone out there in the world that could potentially do something with this.

1:14:43And that was huge when that happened.

1:14:46Mike Boudet:Roughly three years after Jamie's disappearance, the destroyed plastic was finally sent to the forensic experts at Quantico, Virginia. Even the technicians working for the FBI characterized this as one of the most damaged phones they'd ever seen. Somehow, after months of trying, they successfully extracted some data. In April 2019, the recovered contents were handed back to investigators in Washington with confirmation that it was, in fact, Jamie's phone. And buried within a cache of binary code was a voice memo. But it wasn't Jamie. Instead, the voice recorded on her device was a man's, later determined to be her half-brother, David.

1:15:41Mike Boudet:Not only that, but the voice memo was an exact replica of the text message sent to David's girlfriend from Jamie's device on June 9th, but instead it was in audio form. The timestamps were also a match. Investigators theorized that David must have used the speech-to-text function to compose the message and accidentally saved an audio version while pretending to be Jamie, who by that point was already dead. A selfie was also recovered from the device. It was a photo of David, with his eyes wide, pupils dilated, and sweat dripping from his forehead. Investigators referenced wooden beams in the background of the image, verifying that the photo was taken inside the Kenmore home, possibly minutes after Jamie was killed.

1:16:42Mike Boudet:The data recovered from Jamie's phone, combined with all the other evidence that took years to piece together, finally gave prosecutors the confidence to bring their case to court. At his trial in September of 2022, The state laid out the brutal details of Jamie's death. How she was likely beaten, dismembered, burned, stuffed into a suitcase, and dumped on the side of the road. Forensic analysis linked the red bedsheets from the suitcase to Jason Nolte's bed. Witness testimony placed David at the car wash, scrubbing down the Acura following Jamie's disappearance. Text messages and recovered voice memos captured David's voice.

1:17:34Mike Boudet:All of this was crucial in court. Despite all the evidence, there was no smoking gun. There was no murder weapon. Still, Kathleen Decker, who had worked for years on this case, was confident that the jury would make the right decision. I felt really solid about this case, and I trusted that our justice system was going to work. I trusted that the jury was going to hear the facts they needed to hear to come to the right conclusion. So I didn't feel like he was going to get away with it. I don't know why. I just felt like, no, we did our job. We worked really hard. This is going to come out the way it's supposed to come out.

1:18:22Mike Boudet:Her intuition was right. And after weeks of testimony, David Haggard was found guilty of second-degree murder. Ahead of sentencing, Jamie's family members provided victim impact statements. Her sister, who wanted desperately to believe David all along, expressed how Jamie's children would not only grow up without a mother, but without their uncle as well. You might not think that this is fair, but it's not fair for Maddie and Dilly either. They miss their mom. They don't even remember the things I remember. It's not fair that my kids don't grow up, get to grow up with their Aunt Jamie or their Uncle Davey.

1:19:06It's not fair. The choices, these choices tore our whole family apart.

1:19:11Mike Boudet:Oh, did you think this case was going to be wrapped up neatly? What do you think this is? Forensic files? 48-year-old David was later sentenced to 15 years in prison, a punishment that Jamie's family said would never truly bring them closure. Jamie Haggard's case was filled with dead ends and frustrating false leads. It took over six years to go to trial, but that doesn't mean everyone involved faced consequences. Despite their proximity to this case, Jason Nolte and Scott Barnes were never charged with a crime. justice is a real elusive bitch sometimes. Justice is like that ex that dumped you after saying she loved you and then ghosts you.

1:19:58Mike Boudet:And that's it. There's nothing else you can do. Yep. Justice is a real cunt. Now, that doesn't mean that there isn't out there someone else who had involvement. I'm not going to say that David is solely involved and responsible. It's possible there might be others. out there. We were never able to make a case strong enough to charge anyone else. And of course, David was never able to give us any information beyond, well, Scott did it. Okay, well, why are you saying that? Give me something I can work with, something that's tangible. And he never was able to do that. I don't know. There's definitely more to the story than what we know.

1:20:41There's other chapters that we haven't yet addressed or figured out. And let me also say to this day, we don't know where her head is. Her head was not in the suitcase. So that is somewhere out there. I hope and pray that at some point and someday we will have that recovered as it's important for the family to have all of her back. And maybe at some point we'll get that.

1:21:08Mike Boudet:Before we let Kathleen go, we wanted to know what she thought happened to Jamie. Her personal theory never reached the media, nor was it present in court. But in terms of motive, it might just be even more disgusting than the murder and dismemberment itself. So we had information from one of Jamie's friends that Jamie had been raped by David. And we knew David had raped Carly before. She disclosed that to us. So we had reason to believe that Jamie and David had an incestuous relationship and that that had been going on for several years. He was very jealous of her, jealous of any boyfriends that she had, which is why I think that argument probably happened on the 9th.

1:21:55There's no doubt that there is that relationship going on between the two of them.

1:22:00Mike Boudet:Bet you didn't see that one coming. Forensic files eat your heart out. So I think probably what happened is that David and Jamie got into another argument. We know she'd been on the phone with her boyfriend who was in jail due to get out and that she was supposed to pick him up, that she was going to move him into the Kenmore house. So I think that David may have sexually assaulted Jamie. I think that during that, that he strangled her. I think that after he ended up killing her, he may have panicked a little bit because he would have known that Carly was due home. Carly had left that morning to drop off her child at school because it was 830-ish in the morning and Carly was due back home noon-ish.

1:22:45Carly was delayed coming home because she had stopped at a store on the way home. So I think what he did at that point was somehow wrap the body up in the sheet that he got off of Jason's bed. I think cutting her up was probably just ease of transport. That's typically why we see somebody utilize dismemberment. It just makes it easier for transportation. So I think that's probably why he did that. Put her in the suitcase. I think the suitcase came from the house there in Kenmore. and would it surprise me to learn later on that Scott had not only knowledge but participated in some way, shape or form before the fact, during the fact or after the fact?

1:23:27No, it wouldn't. I don't know if we ever will get to that point but that's still another mystery.

1:23:34Mike Boudet:Jesus Christ, how's that for an ending? Violent offenders, habitual lies and incest of all things are just a few of the potential factors that make Jamie's murder a mysterious one almost nine years later. These backroad country white folk or something else, I'll tell you. I mean, I do love Cracker Barrel, but damn. Like Kathleen said, we might never actually find out what really happened to Jamie that day. Still, you have to wonder, did justice really prevail? Or is this case just another reminder that some people are better at getting away with murder than others? Either way, it sure does make you look at this case a little differently when you remember what David said.

1:24:24I have nothing to do with my sister. I love her to death.

1:24:28Mike Boudet:Ew. Ew. Ew. Gross. Well, that's going to do it. I gotta go watch some cartoons. Thank you.

1:25:11Thank you.

1:25:50Mike Boudet:This episode was written and produced by Mike Dunphy. If you like what we do here, be sure to check out Sword and Scale Television at swordandscale.com.

1:26:09Thank you.

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