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The Live Stream Crime Scene

May 13, 2024

In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of Tiktok streamers who stumbled on a dead body.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is"Murder with My Husband." I'm Payton Moreland, and I'm GarrettMoreland. He's the husband, and I'm the husband. I'm just putting this out there right now: if I sound weird, it's because I have Invisalign in. It's my first day, and it's very uncomfortable, and I feel like I can't talk. But I'm putting that out there for everybody so you all know. Before we jump into it, a reminder: we have Patreon and Apple subscriptions, all ad-free content. Bonus episodes, you get all of our live shows for free as well. Lots of stuff going on, so if you're interested, check it out.

Payton, why are you laughing at me right now? Am I talkingthat weird? No, yes, it's so hard to talk in these. No, it's really not bad. Okay,it's really not bad. It really is hard to talk in these though. Okay, do youhave your ten seconds?

My ten seconds, I want to make it short because honestly,it's hard to talk and it kind of hurts. I got Invisalign today. You alreadysaid that. I know I already said that, but I don't really have anything else.

You can't do that. And also, I know it just sounds a littlecomplainy, so whatever. But I'm really hungry right now too, and we're going toeat right after we record this, so I'm pretty excited about it. We're going toeat some Mexican food. I'm going to tell everyone what I'm going to get, and ifit makes you hungry, I'm going to get tuna ceviche, and then I'm probably goingto get chicken fajitas or a steak and lobster, very opposite ends of thespectrum, I know. But I'll decide when I get there, um, some chips and salsa,maybe some guacamole, a water, and yeah, that's what I'm getting. So hopefully,everyone, hopefully, it's making everyone a little bit hungry. And on top ofthat note, let's hop into a true crime episode.

And on top of that note, that doesn't even make sense. Okay,I don't know why isn't that a thing? No, you would say "and on thatnote" or "and on top of that." You would say "on top ofthat note." No, I'm pretty sure "on top of that note" is athing. No, it's not. I'm going to look it up. Kind of mean that you got to tellyour order and then tell me. Would you like to tell your order? I'm justsaying, you never ask me. Well, you have your ten seconds, and you binged on"Into the Dark," you know? Yeah, but you don't get to hear those.

Oh my gosh, I want to hear your order. I forgot, let's hearit. Okay, fine, I will go. You don't have to "b" me. Okay, go. I gettwo shredded beef enchiladas, flour tortilla, green sauce, rice, and beans. Oh,nice babe, thanks. Welcome.

Our sources for this episode are Federal Way Mirror, Fox 12Oregon, The Seattle Times, NBC King 5, BBC, Kent Reporter, Mercury News, NewYork Times, Westside Seattle, and Fox 13 Seattle.

Trigger warning: This episode does include discussions ofmurder and the dismemberment of a body, so please listen with care.

Okay, I've talked in the past about honestly my complicatedrelationship with social media. Just spending too much time scrolling onInstagram, TikTok, Twitter, whatever it is, it can have a serious impact onyour mental health. But even though we all know these sites aren't necessarilythat good for us, we all just tend to keep going back to them again and again.It's so tempting to see what your friends and acquaintances are up to, whetheryour exes or your enemies are doing well or maybe not so well, and obviously,like, the memes. I'm a meme queen, so I have to get on for the memes. Butthere's one thing most of us never, ever, ever expect to see on social media,and that is an active crime scene. So we are going to be covering a case wherethat happened today. All right, let's hear. I'm intrigued.

So, in fairness, this is obviously not what three Seattleteenagers meant to broadcast when they were streaming live on TikTok back onJune 19th, 2020. Oh, 20. So that was like in the midst of TikTok blowing up.Yeah, TikTok blowing up. So they're streaming. They're live streaming, threeteenagers in Seattle. So they were on Alki Beach because an app calledRandonautica had sent them there. That's basically an app where it wouldgenerate a random set of coordinates. So if you want to spend the day exploringan area where you've never been before, you don't particularly care where itis, you can ask Randonautica where to go, and it'll just give you coordinates.And then, is that still a thing, do you know? I don't know if it's still athing, but I mean, we were okay. We were just looking for things to do, I thinka little bit at the beginning of 2020. Yeah.

So basically, these three teenagers arrive at the beachaccording to where this app has sent them, and they don't really know whatthey're going to find there, but they were excited to check it out. They'relive streaming the entire adventure, everyone's going along with them. Andwhile they're walking along the shoreline, the TikTokers were stillbroadcasting everything live. And that's when one of them comes across anabandoned suitcase. So it's lying. Do you know where this is, like, do youremember this? No, uh-uh. Okay.

So it's lying in a rocky part of the beach. It's not too farfrom the waterline. It wasn't an area where someone was likely to just drop andforget their luggage. Like, it was definitely out of place. It looked maybelike the tides had carried it in. Yeah. And so since the teens are livestreaming and they're looking for a random adventure anyway, they figure, let'swalk over and pop open the suitcase. Oh, freaking no, dude. Let's see what'sinside. And they make a joke about maybe it having lost treasure in it. That'swhat they say on the live stream. Not that there was much of any reason tothink this bag had anything really valuable inside. Especially because once theteens walk up, they smell something coming from the suitcase. But for whateverreason, this doesn't stop them. It would probably stop most of us listening tothis, but doesn't stop them.

So they decide to keep live streaming while they unzip thesuitcase. And as soon as they unzip it, the stench becomes even worse. It washard not to gag as they keep opening. And inside, they find a bunch of blackgarbage bags. And I mean, like, the suitcase was stuffed with them. Now,obviously, the garbage bags are not empty. There were human remains inside ofthis suitcase. And these TikTokers had literally just live streamed themselvesfinding a dead body. That is so insane. I don't know what I would do. So theyimmediately turn off the stream, which good call. They are like, "Hey,we're ending the stream," and they call the police.

But they couldn't take back all of the footage that they'dalready live streamed. I mean, it's not like this was edited. To the world,they were live. It was out there for anyone to see. And they didn't take thevideo down or set it to private once the recording had stopped. In fact, thevideo begins to go viral, literally wild. Detectives start their investigationinto this crime scene.

So as soon as law enforcement officers arrived at the beach,they opened the suitcase to examine it for themselves, and it was just like theTikTokers had said. There were garbage bags full of human body parts inside.Now, clearly, the victim or victims had been chopped up and stuffed into thesebags. My gosh. So after some searching, the police also found even more garbagebags floating in the ocean like the ones in the suitcase. These too had humanremains in them.

So three days after the initial discovery on June 22nd,2020, the police found yet another suitcase. Now, this one wasn't by the beach,but it was in a river that ran by a power station. But just like that firstinitial discovery, this suitcase is also full of body parts. Now, eventually,the police determined that all of these bags and suitcases contained theremains of two different people. So two different dumping grounds as well. Theyassumed the victims had been killed by multiple individuals working together,and they based this on a couple of factors.

First, the cuts on the bodies weren't uniform. It lookedlike someone had used different tools, different methods for this dismembermentprocess. That would make sense if there were several people working to chop upthese victims together. So this is where the police go. They're like, becausethere are different tools, we think that there were multiple people.

Now, these two bodies were in bad shape, understandably. Notonly had they been cut up and spread across multiple locations, but they'd alsobeen dead for quite a while. It took some time for the authorities to identifythe victims, but later that summer, the detectives learned the deceased peoplewere 27-year-old Austin Wenner and 35-year-old Jessica C. Lewis. They were acouple who had actually been dating for 8 years. Wow. So a couple that wasmurdered, and they'd been living together in their current apartment sinceDecember of 2019, so for 7 months.

Jessica, who went by Jesse, worked at an assisted livingfacility for the elderly, and her coworkers and patients absolutely loved her.She had a reputation for being the kind of person who could keep calm, justdeal with anything that came up. She didn't let the stress of her job stand inthe way of giving every patient the care and love that they needed. Now, thismay not be surprising, given that Jesse was also a mother of four. She'd beenaround the block in terms of taking care of other people. She'd seen it all anddone it all, and she knew how to keep her cool.

Now, her boyfriend Austin actually used the nickname Cash.So Jesse and Cash, and he loved everything about nature and the outdoors. Hishobbies included loading his dogs into his truck and driving off into thewilderness, country music station cranked, you know, on the radio.

Cash and Jesse's love story hadn't always gone smoothly oreasily. Like any other couple, they had sometimes hit some rough patches. Theygot into fights, they struggled to make it work. But through the entire eightyears that they'd been together, they'd been totally committed and loyal to oneanother. But sadly, their relationship had now come to an abrupt, violent end.Top of Form

It's crazy because we do cases from all different years,1800s up until now, and it's just weird whenever there's one that's more recentbecause it just goes to show like this stuff continues to happen and willcontinue to happen until the world is gone. And this is just the epitome of amodern-day murder for someone to be live streaming on TikTok. It goes to showhow things evolve, and it's kind of scary, right?

So as police are looking into Jesse and Cash, they feel likethe murders came out of nowhere. They don't feel like this couple had anyenemies, which meant, so far as the police were concerned, there weren't anyobvious suspects. And they didn't find much useful information when they triedto pull data from Cash and Jesse's phones. In fact, both of their phones turnedoff at around 7 p.m. on June 9th, 2020. So this was 10 days before their bodieswere found. So it seemed like they were killed roughly a week and a half beforethe murderer maybe dumped their remains.

Okay, so interestingly, when the police notified Cash andJesse's families of their death, their relatives weren't actually totallyshocked. Of course, they never had imagined anyone in the world would killthese two, but they had noticed that the pair were missing even before theirbodies were found. So during those 10 days they couldn't reach them, they hadbeen doing some investigating on their own. Cash's dad, Dean, had driven out tothe house that they rented in a Seattle suburb called Burien. He knocked on thedoor, the landlord answered.

This was a 64-year-old man named Michael Dudley. He ownedthe house where they all lived together. So Michael stayed on the ground floor,and Cash and Jesse leased an upstairs bedroom from him. Now, when Cash's fatherexplained who he was, Michael, the landlord, didn't really seem interested intalking to him. He just said the two had moved out recently, and he didn't knowwhere they had gone. So that was surprising to Cash's father, Dean, and he onlyfelt more suspicious when he was about to leave and he passed a garbage can onthe property. He happened to glance into it and he recognized a bunch ofclothes that belonged to his son, Cash, in the garbage. Now, it's true thatsome people throw out old stuff when they're moving, right? The stress ofpacking, unpacking, maybe helps people realize how much clutter they don'tneed. But Cash and Jesse had been living in Michael's house for less than ayear. They'd already been through the stress of moving recently, and they'dalready had their chance to clean out their junk in the past. So moreimportantly, Dean knew his son was pretty short on money at this time. Hewasn't in a position to go on a shopping spree, update his wardrobe, throwclothes away. If he was moving, he would have taken all of his clothes withhim.

So Dean told the police that he didn't believe Cash andJesse had just moved out of the house willingly, and he found the landlord'sstory suspicious. So the investigators took a closer look at the home and thepeople who lived in it.

So, police go back to the night of June 9th. They're lookingat what went on that day, and they learned that several people had actuallycalled 911 at around 7:00 p.m. on that evening. It was the exact same date andtime that Cash and Jesse's phones were shut off. The calls were placed bymultiple neighbors who lived next to Cash and Jesse and Michael, the owner.Multiple neighbors gave the dispatcher Jesse and Cash's address. They all heardthe sounds of gunshots coming from that house, and at least one witness hadalso heard a male voice say something like, "Don't do this, we'll justleave." What? Okay, so what the freak, maybe that was Cash trying to talkdown the killer, maybe he was begging for his life. Either way, the police hadresponded to the call.

They drove out to Jesse and Cash's house, they knocked onthe door, but nobody answered. Do I... I don't want to ask this question yetbecause it'll give things away, I'm sure you know the answer, so I'll wait, butI'm curious, the time from when they were killed until the time that thesuitcase was found, because if people now are like, "Oh yeah, I heardgunshots and I heard this," I would hope that it's within a couple ofdays. It was 10 days. Oh, it was 10 days. 10 days, so no one reported thegunshots for 10 days? They did report the gunshots. Oh, okay. The police go outto the house, they knock on the door, they knock and knock, nobody answers, sothe police just leave. Okay. And they don't follow up. So multiple neighborscall the cops in Seattle and say, "Hey, there were gunshots from thishouse, we heard arguing," that's insane. The police show up, no oneanswers, they leave, and they don't follow up. I see.

I think it goes without saying that this was a mistake, likethis is very clearly a mistake, because when Jesse and Cash's autopsy resultscame out, they said that both of them had been shot to death. So it is mostlikely that the neighbors were correct, just Jesse and Cash had been shot intheir house that night. Their cell phones then turned off, police came out,knocked on the door, nobody answered, and they left. That's wild. So now thehomicide detectives, obviously they get a warrant to search the home, and thelandlord, Michael, was there with them while they walked through the house, andthey asked him about that night, why didn't he come to the door when the policecame to investigate, and he acted like he didn't know what they were talkingabout. He says he didn't ever remember hearing gunshots, he says nobody came tothe door that night, maybe he was busy or distracted.

Next, the officers went to the bedroom Jesse and Cash hadbeen renting, and they discovered that there was fresh paint all over thewalls. Now, at the time, they don't think much of it, it's not like the wholewall was repainted, but later on, the cops do come back and chip off thispaint, and underneath, they find two bullet holes that had recently been filledin with spackle. And when they dug into those holes, they found three bulletsembedded into the wall.

All right, so next, they scoured the entire house for Jesseand Cash's blood, and they only found one small smudge, which they determinedwas Cash's.Top of Form It was inthat same bedroom, the one that he rented with Jesse, but it wasn't nearly theamount you'd expect if two people had been shot to death and then dismemberedand stuffed into suitcases. I'm talking like it was a very small smear, itcould have been from a cut or a nosebleed. Plus, those bullets the police foundin the wall didn't have a single drop of blood on them either, which meant theydidn't hit anyone. Those bullets that were in the wall didn't go throughanybody. This is crazy.

Now, on top of that, when cadaver dogs searched theproperty, they didn't alert to any dead bodies having been there. So, I know itsounds very weird and suspicious, but the police literally couldn't prove thatanything violent had happened there. I mean, the only thing they have is theneighbors saying, "We heard gunshots," and now they're saying,"Well, maybe he just shot the gun into the wall because the bullets don'teven have blood on them."

This leaves them with two possibilities: Cash and Jesse weremurdered and dismembered somewhere else. The bullets in the wall and the 911call from the night their phone shut off were both just red herrings.Possibility number two was that whoever killed the couple had done a very, verythorough job of cleaning up after themselves. So, of course, if someone hadscrubbed the apartment down, that would mean that they would have had to spendlots of time there. If a stranger had committed the murders, the landlord orone of the tenants would have probably noticed someone spending a lot of timecleaning the bedroom. But if the killer was someone who lived there, they couldcover up the crime more easily without drawing suspicion.

So, the next step was for the police to talk to Cash andJesse's landlord, Michael, plus all of the other tenants who had access to thehouse. From the sound of things, Michael, when he gets interviewed, is not ahuge fan of the couple, and their conflicts went way beyond the usual roommatedisagreements. Apparently, Cash and Jesse had gotten into some kind of troublewith the law while they were living in Michael's house, and I'm not entirelyclear on what those legal issues were. The sources were pretty vague, butapparently, he complained to another tenant that they were stealing from him.Makes sense why he didn't want to help or be involved. Not saying that it'sokay or not okay, but it makes sense why he was doing what he did. Well, eitherway, it was clear that Michael was unhappy about the fact that Cash and Jessewere doing illegal things from their unit. And on top of that, the two of themweren't up to date on rent. Michael had actually tried to evict them forfalling so far behind, but Cash and Jesse just were refusing to leave. So,Michael resented them for not paying their share while, from the sound of it,being less than ideal tenants.

So, this meant Michael had a motive to want Cash and Jessedead. He wanted to get them out of the bedroom so he could get differenttenants who followed the house rules and paid their rent too. Easy, too simple,no way it's him. So, of course, he had access to their room, he could haveeasily scrubbed it clean for days after the murders, but none of those detailswere proof that he'd done it.

All the police had still was circumstantial evidence, thatis until they started talking to some of the other renters who lived in thatsame house. This includes a woman whose identity has not been made public, butshe approached the investigators with a truly shocking story. So, once this allcomes to light, she reaches out to them. According to this woman, she'd movedinto the house late on the night of June 9th, 2020. This is the night that theneighbors hear the shots at 7:00 p.m. This is the night that the couple'sphones get turned off. In other words, the night when the police believe Jesseand Cash were killed in this house, another woman was moving in.

When the woman showed up at the front door for the firsttime, Michael let her in, but she says he looked like he'd recently been in afight. There were scratches all over his face and body, his glasses had beenbroken. Now, this woman was not renting the same room that Cash and Jesse hadlived in, she was going to rent a different room that had been vacant. Butwhile Michael was showing her around, this woman stuck her head into Cash andJesse's room anyway, just to check it out, and she saw fresh bullet holes inthe walls and in the furniture. Okay, it—I don't, this is getting weird. So,it's the same wall that was spackled over. It just seems too obvious for thelandlord to do it because, of course, he's going to be the first suspect.Sorry, I cannot talk right now.

Well, so this lady is a little freaked out. When she'slooking around and she sees these bullet holes, she's a little freaked out. So,what does she do? In 2020, she takes her phone out and she takes a picture ofthe bullet holes. Wow. And then when she comes into the police, she shows themand she goes, "But get this, these bullet holes were not the creepiestthing I saw when I was touring this house." She says, "There was ahuge heap of clothing on the bed in Cash and Jesse's room, and there was ahuman hand sticking out of the clothing." Oh my gosh. So, as you'relistening, you're probably like, "Why didn't she run screaming out of thehouse?" Maybe it was one of those instances where everything was just soabsurd, she was like, "Hey, maybe someone's just sleeping." You don'tthink that's a dead body, Halloween decoration. There's no way that's a realhand, right? Like, she was just thinking, "Okay, maybe it's fake or maybethere's just someone sleeping under those clothes." And it just keptgetting weirder because there was actually a sink in this house that was justlike full of guns.

So, she moves in, and eventually, Michael, the owner, islike, "Hey, can you help me get rid of these guns that are in thesink?" And she tells police, she comes forward, and she says, "I did,like, I helped him." I don't know why she didn't say no. I don't know ifshe just felt like she couldn't say no, whatever it was, this was her laststraw. Like, after she helped him with this, and everything she'd seen anddone, she moved out. She went straight to the police to report everything thatshe'd seen inside the house. So, this was obviously enough to confirm for thedetectives that Michael most likely did this. He had motive, he wanted thetenants out so he could bring in someone who would actually pay rent. He hadopportunity, he lived in the house, no one would get suspicious if a landlordwas cleaning a bedroom that had recently become vacant, and he had the means.Thanks to the statement of that anonymous woman, the detectives knew that therewere guns in the home at one point, especially on the night of the murder. So,not to mention the fact that he threw out Cash's clothes and lied about it,saying that he'd moved out, or his odd story where he claimed he never noticedthe gunshots that night when multiple neighbors did hear it.

Between the woman's testimony, the 911 call, and the cellphone data, the detectives were able to build a decent timeline of the night ofthe murders. The detectives figured that Michael must have killed Cash andJesse at around 7:00 p.m. He covered up their bodies with clothes and cleanedup just enough to not raise any alarm bells. He didn't have enough time to getrid of the murder weapon, so he tossed it in the sink and then for the next 10days or so, he spent as much time as he could scrubbing and cleaning that roomto the best of his abilities.

I'm going to be so surprised if it's Michael. Really? Yes.You don't feel like this is pretty open and shut? I feel like it's too open andshut. Okay, police think that he did it until there wasn't a trace of bloodleft, but then he has the bodies to dispose of, so the police believed hechopped Cash and Jesse up into smaller pieces so he could fit them both intothe two suitcases. He dumped one of them on the beach where those TikToklive-streaming teens found it, and then another one ended up in the river.Interestingly, once the police saw Michael as a suspect, they pulled his cellphone data, and it showed that over the course of the entire summer of 2020,Michael only visited that beach once, and it was very late on the night of June18th, 2020. This was the day before the remains were found. This was the lastpiece of evidence that they felt like they needed, and on August 19th, 2020,they arrested Michael and charged him with murder. No, no, I can't. It doesn'tend here. I can't believe that this is the case. So let's keep going becauseI'm waiting for a but.

So by the time Michael faced a jury, it was December of2022, and there was a lot of room for debate about whether or not he wasactually guilty. In fact, there was so much back and forth between the twosides that the trial dragged out for two months. The prosecutors had all theevidence I mentioned already: the cell phone data, the bullet holes in thewall, the former tenant who was going to testify against him. The defense hadthe utter lack of any kind of blood in his house. Even if you consider the factthat he could have scrubbed his home top to bottom in the two and a half monthsthat passed between the murders and his arrest, it would be difficult to scrubaway every last piece of blood so that even cadaver dogs didn't find anything.And since the police never found the murder weapon, that was another piece ofevidence against him that was missing.

The defense lawyer tried to argue that the state wasbuilding a house of cards against Michael. It was flimsy. It could topple atany time. There was nothing tying him to the crime but circumstantial evidence.I think one of the weirdest things that I can't stop thinking about is why didhe or whoever go and paint over the bullet holes? So that is the one thing thatis sticking in my mind because that's crazy and it doesn't make sense. So theyasked him about this, obviously, and he says the bullet holes in the wall werejust from an accidental discharge. He said that one day he wasn't handling hisfirearm correctly and it went off. It didn't hurt anyone, went into the wall.That was why the bullets didn't have any blood on them.

And that tenant who said that she'd seen a pile of clotheswith the arm sticking out? Well, apparently, she had a long history of lying.She'd been in trouble with the police in the past, so maybe she made up thestory with all of those incriminating details because she thought she might getsomething out of cooperating. In fairness, there kind of were a lot of holes inher testimony. It was odd that she didn't speak up when she said she saw a deadbody or when Michael supposedly asked her to get rid of a murder weapon. Sheonly went to the police and gave a statement after she helped him basicallycover this up. And it was odd that even though she supposedly did get rid ofthe gun for Michael, she couldn't tell police where or how. They still hadn'trecovered it by the time of trial. Michael's lawyer even presented an alternatetheory about who might have really killed Cash and Jess.

And I mentioned earlier that he complained that the coupleapparently brought some illegal activity into the home. According to Michael,at some point, their behavior was so bad that some unknown group of people hadactually pulled a gun on them in the house. So even though Cash and Jesseescaped this encounter, Michael thought maybe those same gunmen just came backlater. So it kind of is just a little bit of he said, she said. Like there'snot really any physical evidence. How do two people die by gunshot wounds, getchopped up into pieces, put in a suitcase, thrown on the beach, ocean,whatever, and nobody knows anything about it in 2020? We're not in 1910, it's2020. I mean, it feels obvious that it's Michael, but by the time this casegoes to trial, the evidence isn't very strong. Yeah, I mean, it seems thecircumstantial evidence feels very strong, right? Like, I don't know.

But then Michael comes forward with they've been in trouble,like people had come after them before. I just accidentally misfired the gun.There's no blood anywhere. Those bullets don't even have blood on them. Yeah,and I don't know Michael as a person, so I don't know how many people werelike, he would never kill someone or he would kill someone. There's this, Idon't know, man. But you know, obviously, the prosecution, when they hearMichael's theory about it, was probably someone else who had killed them,they're like, like okay, but why the body under the pile of clothes if she'stelling the truth? And why would you make your renter hide a gun if you didn'tactually use it to kill somebody?

Ultimately, Michael was found guilty of the murders of bothAustin Cash Winer and Jessica Lewis. Okay, his sentence was 46 years and 8months in prison. There's probably, I know you have a bunch of information infront of you, but there's probably way more to the trial than this, I wouldassume. Yeah, I mean, I gave like the main, okay. Um, so he was already 65years old at the time of his sentencing, which means that he would probablyspend, he's going to spend the rest of his life behind bars, especially becausehe did not have the possibility of parole.

Now, one reason the sentence was so harsh was because of theway he treated the bodies afterward. The courts called the dismembermentcontempt and utter disrespect for the victims. Was there any proof that heactually dismembered the bodies? No proof, right? No, just the bodies werefound dismembered. Wow. So when Cash's father, Dean, read a victim impactstatement, he said he still had recurring nightmares about the way his son andJesse had been killed. Sad. Clearly, the jury was moved. But when he got hisverdict, Michael's lawyer immediately told the press that they would appeal. Asof right now, he's still in prison, waiting to see what his next steps will be.And since the case is so recent, there's a good chance that more developmentswill come along after this episode is released.

Okay, now there's one more part of this story that I need toinclude, and it's definitely something we've seen recently, and I feel like Ijust need to include it. Okay, let's hear it. So obviously, that's the end ofthe story for Austin, Jessica, Michael, but I still haven't covered everything,and I want to go back to the idea that opened this episode. That was when Jesseand Cash's bodies were found. It was by a trio of teenage TikTokers who werelive streaming. Like I said, they turned the recording off the moment theyrealized there were human remains in the suitcase. But I also told you thatthey didn't remove the video of finding the luggage and opening it.

And we know that people tend to be fascinated by strangethings, a little bit dark. I mean, we're all here. It only took a few hours forthat video to go viral, and by the end of that summer in 2020, it had more than25 million views of someone's body being found. And once Cash and Jesse'sfamilies learned the pair had been killed and once they realized that the viralvideo was of their family members' bodies, they asked for the video to be takendown from TikTok. Um, and then the teens didn't respond. And so the familyescalated by reporting it to TikTok, and the app was like, "Hey, we're nottaking it down." Like, they were just live streaming, they stumbled acrossit, they didn't break any community guidelines, apparently. Like, they do havepolicies against disturbing content, obviously, but the posters had stoppedrecording before any actual remains could make it on screen. So you see thebags and the kids realize what it is, but they didn't open the bags up andshow. They did not show the live stream the actual bodies. It's just the bagsand then the kids saying, "Oh my gosh, I think we found a dead body."So the clip technically doesn't break any of the rules, and TikTok said wewon't take it down.

This was very painful for Jesse and Cash's families. In aninterview with CNN, Jesse's aunt talked about her mixed feelings about thewhole situation because obviously, on one hand, she was glad the TikTokersfound the suitcase, right? If they hadn't, it may have washed out into theocean, their bodies may have never been found. But maybe Jesse and Cash's casewouldn't even have been solved without these TikTokers finding this body. Thisis according to the family. But still, it's incredibly difficult to watchknowing that your family member is in that suitcase and it's going viral. It'sjust, it's a hard thing.

So eventually, the video was set to private so the generalpublic couldn't view it anymore, and it's unclear if this is something theoriginal account holder did or if TikTok intervened and made it private. And Ithink it's just hard, right, because there's nothing wrong with posting online,and I also think, you know, the True Crime Community has helped solve multiple,multiple cases and get things done with their activism on social media. Butit's important to make sure that you're also not just like chasing attention.And so I don't think the teenagers ever set out to traumatize anyone. I don'tthink that's obvious. They weren't doing that that day. They didn't know theywere going to find a body. But sometimes even when we start out with goodintentions, something bad can happen, and it's something we could all stand tokeep in mind as we're scrolling online and, you know, active on social media.But that is the case of Austin Winer and Jessica Lewis.

First of all, very sad that they both were killed brutally.No one deserves to be killed, right, at all. And so that's really sad. I don'tknow. I don't know. My thoughts on this one, two people were killed, and I hopethat it was brought to justice. I mean, the justice system said that they thinkthey know who's guilty, so that's great and hopefully some closure for thefamily. I know people are going to ask about her kids, so I just wanted toclarify, leave that out. That's, I think, was kept private for a reason.Private for a reason. And then one of the first cases in a while where it hadme thinking a bit on circumstantial evidence. Um, I feel like thecircumstantial evidence is strong. Yeah, I don't know. Like to me, but I don't,I, I'm also of the opinion of I have no emotions involved in it. Yeah, like ifI was the parent or someone, it would be way different. It would be like that'sthe person, right? And so it's, it's always different from an outsideperspective. I'm sure there's, we don't know as well that they know. And Ithink mine's not even like the eyewitness, the tenant, 'cause I know that, youknow, there were some holes in her story and we've done so many cases wherepeople lie about say, I mean, that's very, very common. Um, mine's more justthe fact that there was clearly motive there, had clearly been issues. I thinkwhen the dad went over and found clothes in the trash can, I, I mean, I thinkit's pretty obvious that that means they were killed there. And if they werekilled in that house, I don't know who else could have done it besides Michaelbecause who was going to be able to clean up that house for as much time as itwould take to get that clean? No, you're right. Michael was the only one. And Ijust don't understand how you don't find blood. I don't either. That's prettycrazy because that's almost impossible, especially 'cause there wasdismemberment. Crazy. Anyways, I'm glad it's solved, so yeah.

All right, you guys, that is our case for this week, and wewill see you next time with another episode. I love it and I hate it. Goodbye.

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