S11, Chapter 11: Inferno

0:05 Tapes from the Dark Side contains descriptions of violence and sexuality. Listener discretion is advised. But just after killing his mom and his dad, the evidence in this case will show that Chamler went on his phone. If you go on your phone, and if any of you ever taken a note, you can take notes on your phone. iPhone has an app called notes. We got some raw. Data and i'll put it up here in a second. I won't put the raw data because it's a bit challenging to see.

0:45 But Chamdler creates a note about five to eleven that day on July first, probably minutes after killing his parents, and the note. Reads weekend shores two two Lemon. Is the chemical name for hydrogen peroxide. You'll hear from people in this case. It's essentially a household cleaner to clean up blood lemon. It deodorizes things mixed together. It's a pretty cheap cleaning product you can have at home. So Chandler writes a note after murdering his parents, H two O two lemon door handles, move your shit upstairs, get a job, and clean the floor.

1:28 He then does just that. He spends the afternoon cleaning the house. Eventually jumps in the shower. We know he's in the shower because his girlfriend and him FaceTime when they're in the shower. No judgment, but that's what happened. And the girlfriend took a screenshot. We know he's in the shower. They say they're good nights, and Chandler says, I'm going to bed, but he doesn't. I'm not going to show many photographs for a little bit, just because I think you deserve to kind of be eased into some of the things you're going to see. That night, what appears to have happened with the evidence will show because mister Halderson took items from around the house and began cutting apart. His parents.

2:11 Saw blades covered in Barton Christa's blood, an axe, Barton Christa's blood, hand saws, things of that sort covered and Barton Christa's blood. He cleaned the house as best he could, and you'll hear about that, but still a blood spatter found of Barton Christa's blood around the house. And he had a plan, wasn't a well thought out plan, but he had one, and that he was going to burn the remains in the family fireplace there in the house, and that night a neighbor who had a security camera behind the Halderson home way far away, was able to catch something.

3:06 I think everyone has a bit of a fascination with the dark side. I myself, Wilways love the dark side as well. I think it's something that everyone secretly longs. For in moves. And if we look closer, there is a white object on that piece of wood. That white object is later determined to be a human bone. The dark side, the dark side of the dark Side.

3:50 Let's do a quick recap. On the afternoon of July first, at two ten pm, Bart Holderson sent a text message to his son saying quote, I'm ready whenever you are. This was the last recorded text ever sent from Bart Holderson's phone. We don't know the exact time, but somewhere between two ten pm and three fifteen pm, Chandler Holderson murdered his father. He ambushed him in the family basement, shooting him in the back multiple times with an Acas model semi automatic rifle. At three nineteen pm, Chandler sent a text message to his mother Christa saying quote, Dad's phone died. Text or call me and get soda on your way home. I have an extra hour of work.

4:37 When Christa arrived home, Chandler murdered her in much the same way that he murdered his father. To this day, we still don't know the exact details, but we do know he likely ambushed her in the family basement, just like he did his father. That's where they kept the soda, and it's also where all the bullet fragments were recovered by police. The cold blooded murder two human beings not to mention your own parents. This would surely be enough to mentally and emotionally break any normal human being to the point of being unable to function. But the mask that Chandler had been wearing for the entirety of his adult life was firmly in place, This hard shell Chandler had spent years fortifying so that nothing and no one could see inside, not even those who thought they were closest to him, not his girlfriend of two years, not his brother, not even his parents. The wall was built, and now there was a crucial task at hand. The events of the Night Ahead could have been ripped straight from the annals of the most horrific horror fiction book or film ever made, except this was no fictional story.

5:53 Between the hours of four PM and seven forty nine pm, Chandler hastily used whatever tools he could fine to begin cutting his parents up into pieces small enough to fit inside the family fireplace. He used an axe to chop off their hands and feet. He used a number of different saws to sever their heads, their legs, and their arms, until their torsos were just rectangular stumps of flesh, barely resembling human beings. It's at seven forty nine PM that Chandler took what was likely a much needed shower. He called his girlfriend, Catherine Melender and video chatted with her through FaceTime. While in the shower, Chandler said that Kat didn't have to mute herself because his parents weren't home.

6:39 This leads me to believe that their conversation likely at some point turned sexual. Chandler assured her that his parents were not home, that they had gone out to pick up some groceries, and while I guess in one sense Chandler's parents really weren't home, in another sense, they were, at least their lifeless bodies were. At some point, after a shower and video call, and perhaps sexual release, Chandler once again descended the steps to the family basement steps to Hell, and while Kat was fast asleep in her bed and her apartment across town, Chandler began methodically carrying out the next step of his plan. Piece by piece.

7:27 He carried his parents' bodies up from the basement to one of their living room fireplaces. What I like to do in has worked for me over the years. I learned this from my predecessor that when we go into the crime scene, whether I'm with my partner Jim Plenty or with Eric Schneider, that we take everything in. We take our notes in with us. But I say we take everything is. We don't talk to each other because we don't want to taint each other's mind. Each person may see things a little bit differently, so I found its best that we walk through the scene, evaluate the scene, and then after we've done a complete walk through the scene and we've done on our evaluation, then we talk amongst each.

8:16 Other and we're not only. Getting understanding as to what each other has seen, but we're also forming a game plan as to how we were going to process this scene and what additional resources we may need to call in. I've referred to it as like a golden hour. It takes a significant amount of time to go through a house as large as that. So, Deputy, just to begin with, how would you describe the Helderson home? Just in general, I. Would describe the overall condition of the house to be half finished, in state of repair. It appeared to be some renovations occurring withinside of the residence and they were still living within the house, so then there were areas that were completed with the renovations.

9:16 Did that pose any challenges to you and your team during the search? Nothing? Significant? No? Okay? What is Exhibit one seventy eight? That is a photograph of the west wall of the same room. I'm sorry, that is the east wall of the same room that we were just in. We're just looking. At the fireplace. That is a gas sealed fireplace. And a fireplace becomes significant in this case, yes it does. Is this the fireplace that became of any significance? No, it is not. Just in general, did the. Living room have any significant significant evidentiary value?

10:00 No it did not. This is actually exhibit nine, an exhibit that we've seen earlier. But what is exhibit nine display. There's a photograph of the dining room and now we're able to see a portion of the kitchen that is to the northwest of this room. And again, did the dining room have any significant evidentiary value to your investigation? No it did not. Right, Was there anything really of note in your investigation in the kitchen. No, there was not. This is the vacuum cleaner that I collected from the bathroom. And what was the vacuum cleaner collected.

10:42 During the evaluation portion of the processing of the crime scene, I identified that there was blood on the side of the vacuum cleaner, and I had further tested that blood with pheno thailine, which gives us a resumptive positive for blood. Under the appearance, they appeared to be blood, but we need to confirm those stains, So we confirm those stains with phenol thaline. Then I use a subsequent test yet again, and it's called the hexagon Obti test. This test differentiates between human and non human blood. And that test was positive.

11:27 For human blood or non human blood. For positive for human blood. Exhibit two eight. What is that a picture of There's. A photograph depicting two refused containers that are provided by municipality for picking of waste and. Did you test to perform any evidentiary test on any of these garbage cans? I did. On the handle of the garbage can, there is reddish brown stain. There's also a reddish brown stains on the inside of the container. The stain that was on the handle was tested with phenothalene, which was presumptive positive, and then followed up with the hexagon OBTI test which was also positive for human blood.

12:22 Could you describe Exhibit two on nine for the jury? This is a photograph of the interior side of the west wall of the garage. In this image, there is a placard with the number seven that is indicating that the metal framed gray basket. That is hanging. And the items that are inside of that basket. And the seven was put there by police. Yes, I put that there. An exhibit two ten, What is two ten? Show? Exhibit two ten shows another photograph of the same bin. However, the first container that was on top of it has been removed to expose a couple lengths of rope. You see a length of rope that is black in color, and there's also a length of rope that is orange in color.

13:17 And why did you note the rope. The black rope is consistent in appearance with a rope that was around the torso of the deceased that was located on the Earlin Road property. To eleven. Again, just a close up of that rope. It's showing the cut end of that rope. Thirteen is a photograph of the axe that I collected from the garage. And just to back up, this axe was kind of hidden behind some boards.

14:01 It was something that you had to look to see. I wouldn't say it was hidden, it was. It was concealed by its placement, but if you had the right angle, you could see it was there. Exhibit two fourteen is a photograph showing staining that is on the area of where the axe head and the handle of the axe come together. This red staining is consistent in an appearance with that of blood. There's also some dark staining on the metal portion of the. Axe head itself. Exhi it is a yet another photograph of the axe with the axe head and again we can see staining in the area of where the axe head and handle intersect.

14:53 Exhibit sixteen, it is a photograph of the same axe. However, is the opposite side of the axe head. Again we can see that there's some dark discoloration in the area where the sharp end of the axe would be, and there's not the same discoloration in the area of the blunt side of the axehead. Two seventeen is a photograph of the same axe, and here we're referencing the handle area, and we can see on the handle that there is dark red reddish brown staining. And there's various stickers. One of these stickers says biohazard.

15:34 Why is that on there? There's a biohead? Is a just stick on sticker on there? Because of the reddish brown staining that is on the axe is human blood? I tested it with the phenolthalene test the presumptive positive. I then followed with the hexagon OBTI tests to determine if if it's human blood or not, and the test came back positive for human blood. At this point, the investigator, wearing blue medical grade gloves, is presented with a large rectangular cardboard box which he proceeds to open carefully, and then facing the jury, he reveals its contents the acts that Chandler used to chop off the hands and feet of his mother and father.

16:19 Deputy, could you please pick up Exhibit to nineteen and maybe walk back and forth besides the jury. And show them. Exhibit to nineteen. Exhibit fourteen is a overview of the family rooms, the table with the chairs. There's a fan on the table, there's a lamp on the table. There's a neck brace on the table, and in the background you can see the stone fireplace. The neck brace still there in the open in the room where Chandler burned his parents, just lying on the table nonchalantly.

17:04 Please explain. Exhibit to twenty eight. It's an overall photograph of the stone fireplace. We can see the fireplace insert if you will. That is in the middle. That's the black rectangular framing that has double bifold glass doors on it. So the left there's a storage area for kindling type wood with a bin. Exhibit two twenty nine. What is Exhibit two twenty nine. Exhibit two twenty nine is a pair of work type gloves. And again those were there when you arrived on scene.

17:45 Correct. This is a photograph of how we found it. Exhibit two thirty is a photograph of the fireplace enclosure. Now, this fireplace is not a gas fireplace. This is a wood burning fireplace. There's a a bie. There are bifold doors on the front. We can see that there are three of the four panes of glass that are in place. The fourth pane of glass is absent, and if we look at the lower edge of the frame on the left side, we can see a portion of the glass that would normally be in that position.

18:25 Remember the pane of glass in the fireplace that Chandler said he broke when throwing a ball for his dog, the same one that he cut his foot on. Well, it turns out that the glass didn't break in the way he described it. We'll come back to this later. Please explain Exhibit two thirty one. Exhibit two thirty one is a photograph of the same fireplace, and we can see again in the area where the glass should be, there are portions of glass still remaining. We can see that above that on the trim for the glass enclosure that there's a silver bare metal essentially with the paint has bubbled up and there's a disruption on that surface.

19:14 I actually I'm going to go back a couple of slides in Exhibit two forty of the items on the table is there also a measuring tape on the table, there. Is a measuring tape. Also appears to be some hand sanitizer. There's a hand sanitizer, and I believe there is a target bag on the far right side. Maybe a bottle of advil and some sort of Star Wars memorabilia. That is correct. Yes. Exhibit two thirty two is a photograph of the far right side or the south side of the glass enclosure.

19:57 This is on the family room side or the non fireside. It's showing the glass and streaks that are on the glass. Do you have any thoughts as to what caused those streaks? Objection speculation? I think you said foundation sustained. You can lay foundation if you if you wish. Detector leatherburry. Have you been taught through your various trainings as a crime scene unit investigator? Have you had some trainings pertaining to fire or arson? Yes, I have. I've attended the Dane County Arson Response Initiative training and received training in fire investigations.

20:43 Additionally, have you had any training on climbed crime scene cleanup or how to process potential cleanup scenarios as you process a scene that a suck suspect may have left behind. Yes, I have based on those training and your experience. Do you have any ideas as to what caused the streaking? It appears that an object was dragged across that surface in an attempt to clean that surface. There appears to be a residue. Is that a fair statement? Yes, this appears to be a smear? Is actually what it appears to be?

21:24 Could you describe it all with that residue? Was it dry, oily? Something else? I really can't get into that because I did not do any further examinations of that. Okay, fair enough to forty one? What is the jury seeing in two forty one? In two forty one, we are seeing the area above the glass doors that is part of the enclosure. And what we're seeing here is the paint. There's a discoloration to the paint and there's actually bubbling that has occurred. Any educated guesses as to what caused the bubbling. Yes, high temperature causes the bubbling of the coating that is on that material. And as we continue, we can see that it is actually burned away from the metal material itself and is exposed the raw metal.

22:19 And that's what you see all the way on the right side. That is correct. And below the fireplace grate is a ash clean out door, and what is. An ash cleanout door? It's an area where the ash can be. Depositive and swept into when cleaning the fireplace. Out Exhibit two thirty seven. Exhibit two thirty seven is the photograph. It's a close up photograph of the previous image that was depicted. What we can see in this image and Drew My attention was the differentest colorations on the grate itself.

23:03 When we look at the grate, we can see that there are areas that are more gray or light in color, and then we see areas that are more dark or they have a wet appearance to them. When I had seen this, I knew that there was something more burnt in this fireplace other than just wood burning materials in new sprint, and I elicited the help of the ATF in the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigations ARSON Response Unit to assist. Exhibit two thirty nine, What is the jury seeing?

23:44 Exhibit two thirty nine is a photograph. It's a close up photograph of the two logs that are situated in the grate. We also can see the unburnt newsprint if we look in the center of the image, we see a dark colored object that is burnt wood that has been placed on top of the unburnt newsprint. And if we look closer to the black, burnt, charred wood, there is a white object on that piece of wood. That white object is. Later determined to be human bone.

24:29 And that determination was made by the forensic anthropologist. Yes, doctor Christina Figueroa Soto. Tell us about Exhibit two forty three. Exhibit two forty three is a photograph depicting evidence markers with alpha markers next to them. These are depicting individual stains of blood that I located. On the dark tar like floor. You can also that there is a. Marker on the hearth let her be that is also from a reddish brown stain that tested positive for blood.

25:13 A piece of bone blood, and a fireplace that had been burning so ferociously that it had melted the metal coating on the frame. In addition to that it broken pane of glass on the fireplace cover. At this point, if investigators wanted to put forth the theory that Chandler had burned his parents' bodies in the family fireplace, they almost certainly had enough evidence. Yet more was to come a nail in the proverbial coffin that would steal shut the case against Chandler Holderson so airtight that a conviction would seem almost inevitable. Right back after this quick ad break, all of our episodes are available on Patreon ad free.

26:06 If you want to help support the show, go to patreon dot com. Slash Tapes from the dark Side. In homicide cases that are built on circumstantial evidence, an allusion is often made to the fact that murder almost never happens right on camera. Video evidence is almost always prioritized. We trust what we can see with our own eyes above almost anything else. What if there was video in this case that could pin Chandler Holderson to this crime, or at least the attempted cover up. Scott Coons was a Sheriff's deputy with the Dane County Sheriff's Office in Madison, Wisconsin.

27:07 He was trained in an area known as video forensics and certified as what is known as a LEVA, which is one of the longest acronyms I've ever heard. Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association International Certified Forensic Video Analyst. The voice you just heard was Scott Coons himself, who is also certified under the National Technical Investigators Association as a technical investigator. In addition to being an investigator himself, Scott was also a teacher, taught not only in the state of Wisconsin, but throughout the entire world. I've been fortunate enough to teach across the United States to law enforcement, to crime lab personnel, private investigators, attorneys throughout Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden, Oman, the UK. There's been a lot of teaching opportunities for that. I've also been given the opportunity to guest lecture at UW plattfell at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha, Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville, the National Forensic Academy in the University of Tennessee, and Marshall University in West Virginia. I have taught forensic video analysis and ethics courses at Madison College I think it

28:37 was about seven years, and I've taught a video evidence course at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, Wisconsin. Simply put, for the task that lay ahead, Scott was the kind of guy that you wanted on your team. In this specific case. At some point where you asked to become involved regarding a video of some homeowner named Lynch who lived on Bridgeman Road, perhaps behind the Alderson residents, who had a video facing the rear of his property. I was and did you talk to mister Lynch? I did several times. Colin Lynch one of the Holderson's neighbors. Like many of those living in that quiet neighborhood and Windsor, Colin had a number of security cameras. In fact, he had thirteen.

29:25 Probay say sell your name of the writer, Colin Lynch, C, L, I, N, L and H. Did you know someone named Bart Holderson? Yes? How did you know Bart Holderson? Neighbor? And we're both commissioners on Lake District? To you pull that microphone just a little bit closer to you, I'm sorry, sometimes it's already hear in this room. You say you're both commissioners on a lake district. Yes, it's a special tax district that acquires funds for the management of the pond that we live on. Sure you both back up to the pond. Yeah. Correct. In relation to mister Holderson's house, were you aware of where Bart Alderson lived? Yes?

30:06 Where was your house in relation to his house? Directly behind him across the pond. Okay, So if you looked across the pond, you'd see bart Alderson's house, you correct. Okay, keep in mind this pond that laid between the Holderson's house and the Lynch's house. We're turned to it later. Sir, did you back in July twenty twenty one, did you have any security cameras at your house? Yes? What type of security system or how many cameras did you have at your home? Total of thirteen? Did some of them face the front of your house? Yes? And did at least one of them face the rear of your house. Rear?

30:46 Word? Yeah? Okay? And does that camera look toward the pond in some respects? Yes? The pond is in the in the images in them above the ground. Sure. So what's the purpose of What was the purpose of that camera when you installed it? I Was it to look at the pond? Or was it to look at something else? Oh? I had planned when I installed the cameras. I had planned on in putting in a pool. And there's terribly risky. Terrifying things. And so. One of the many reasons for installing cameras at the pool in the rear was the primary purpose of that.

31:28 In the mid part of July of last year. Did you make were the police having contact with you about your security cameras and perhaps them having some footage that they thought was helpful. Yes? And did you provide full access to your security system at that time? Yes. In fact, at one point they actually took your kind of the DVR from your home, did they? Did they not? That's correct? Okay, So the cops had security footage of the Holderson house, but it's a grainy video taken from hundreds of feet away. Was there anything on this tape that could possibly help the case? That's where Scott Koons comes in into science known as reverse projection, which he would use to meticulously recreate what happened inside the Holderson House during the early morning hours July second, twenty and twenty one.

32:22 So I knew that body parts had been found prior to my involvement with the case, and if I remember correctly, an arrest had been made just prior to me getting involved in a case as well. I was shown a couple of photographs of the inside of the Holderson residents. I was informed that it appeared to have been a fire in and around the fireplace in the lower level of the family room at the house, and I was informed that no bodies were found. Typically in our homicides, we find bodies right there, and in this case, that wasn't the situation. The flickering lights that instigator saw on the DVR video was no bigger than a handful of pixels, and at the current moment, there was no definitive evidence that this indicated a fire inside the Halderson home. Scott Koons would need to use his skills to interpret the data held within those pixels to uncover the truth. One of the first things that he did was identify any openings in the rear of the Halderson home from which light could escape.

33:28 There were, in fact seven such openings. In order from left to right, we have number one, the dining room window, number two, the kitchen window, number three, the glass kitchen door, number four, the family room window, which we'll call the fireplace window, number five, the family room door, number six, the TV room window, and number seven the small garage window. Well, when I initially got briefed on this case, upon my return to Madison, I made contact with Deputy Sheriff Mike Wilk. He had been assigned to look at. The video from seventy twenty two Bridgman Road mister Lynch's DBR video and a catalog the series of events chronologically that he observed in the video. I've trained Mike Wilk in the past at Madison College, so I'm familiar with him and his work. And I said, Mike, let's meet.

34:20 I just want you to show me what you see, what you don't see, and what your observations are. And he indicated to me that on the video there was a flickering light that he believed was coming from the Halders And residents on the early morning hours of July second, twenty twenty one, and I said, what do you believe that light to be? He said, I think it's a fire in that family room at the house. And I asked him why he believed that, and he said things that made sense to me. It's a flickering light. He had knowledge. He told me that there was a fireplace in that room and I said, well, how do you know it's coming from that window? He said, well, I've looked at daytime video and I think that's where it is. So I looked at that video, and not being familiar at that point with the residents, I thought it's probably right, But really it's a perception thing we perceived it probably was that windows. So the question I posed to him and to Detective Seank and Sims is, I think we have an opportunity here with this video to not only perceive what we think was the source of that light, but to prove it. And so the question really was where was that light coming from? Not what the source of the light was, but where in the Holderson residence was that coming from.

35:30 Scott goes pretty in depth here with a technical explanation, so all simplify it a little bit. The video file is made up of frames, which are essentially themselves individual pictures. In each second of video, a security camera will usually record around fifteen to thirty frames, and each one of those frames is made up of pixels, little squares of digital information, and. We'll look at a good deal of video here in a moment. The unknown is right, and I think we already talked about this. The question you're trying to answer the unknown as which window was associated with that flickering light for that several hour period in those early morning. Hours of the second, that's correct. Okay, you had to answer some questions to solve this question.

36:14 I would imagine first being how is the video file constructed that. You had Berrickley. This image is made up of two hundred and forty pixels tall and horizontally three hundred and fifty two pixels wide on the right side of the screen. I have shown a small portion enlarged to try to show those actual pixels where they are, actual visual little squares of information, just to orient people about the idea that we don't normally see pixels, but in the laboratory we see them all the time. A process known as reverse projection would be the key to unlocking the secrets of this video footage. Reverse projection has been around in the field of forensics since at least the nineteen seventies, and you might not realize it, but you've probably come across it at point, just based on how commonly it's used these days. When someone robs a bank and they're caught on video, they'll often use reverse projection to estimate their height. Now, this science is only possible if you have accessed to certain reference points and measurements. For example, you can't figure out a suspect's height unless you know roughly their distance from the camera, the camera angle, and at least a couple of background references in the video. With our case, investigators were fortunate to have a number of reference points. Firstly, the distance from the camera to the Halderson House could be measured and it hadn't moved three hundred and sixty seven feet For our international audience, that's one hundred and eleven meters.

37:47 The camera had not changed positions, so the angle could be measured, and the angle of the lens could also be measured. So the way video is structured, the pixels always start with the location zero. So in the upper left hand corner in this example, that pixel in the upper left hand corner would be x position zero. Why position zero zero. Zero, That is its location in two dimensional space. Got it? And so if we look at the next slide, perhaps the different corner. Yeah. So the second example here I made in slide sixteen is the opposite the lower right hand corner. It's at it's maximum X value, it's all the way to the right. It's at it's maximum Y value all the way at the bottom. So we would have an x Y coordinate of three point fifty one two thirty nine. And again those numbers are one less than a total with and height of that image because we start counting at zero instead of one.

38:41 So these pixels essentially can be placed on a graph absolutely okay, So the question becomes then the flickering window. What are the x Y coordinates of that? Correct? That's what was of concern. Yes, where were they located? The distance from the lens at Colin Lynch's house across the pond to the Hullerson residence was three hundred and sixty seven feet. That is quite a distance when you couple that with a wide angle lens. Most closed circuit television cameras have a wide angle lens so they can cover. A wide area. You may want to cover your whole front yard or a whole area in entry away to your business or something. The wide angle lens makes objects appear smaller than they really are, So when you have a wide angle lens coupled with a long distance, objects appear quite small, and if they're small, there's less detail. This video resolution is three point fifty two by two forty to give your perspective, HD or high definition nineteen twenty by ten eighty So the total resolution for every frame of video here is about four percent of the area of HD. So not dealing with a very large data set, we have very limited data available to us. So on July thirtieth, it was a Friday evening, I met in front of the Holderson residence with Deputy Wilk and with Lieutenant Carls brief them again and what I wanted them to do, and what I had done was I took a forty eight inch piece of angle iron steel and I connected magnetic led lights to it, so we had approximately three feet

40:12 of vertical light and then the bottom foot of that stick kind of like a lightsaber you could hold on to without having lights beneath your hands. What I told Deputy Wilk was, I said, we're going to be in cell phone contact. I'm going to be over at the Lynch residence across the pond. I said, I'm going to give you direction where I want you to stand. And when I give you the command, what I'd like you to do is take that lightsaber, that stick and just move it slowly in front of the window of where you're standing. I don't want you to wave it wide. I don't want you to hold it up higher low. I want you to be in front of from the camera's perspective, where the frame of the windows would be. The next step was for the forensic team to film their experiment. They use the exact same camera that was used to record the footage from July second, and it seemingly was in the exact same spot. Yet they ran into a problem when they took the footage back to the lab at the Sheriff's office.

41:07 Mister Lynch told me that he had not done anything to his DVR system, But he did say to me he said he had been doing some reconstruction work on the deck, I think replacing some deck boards or something. He said, They've been. Doing a lot of hammering, sawing, pounding. He said there's a possibility that the camera might have moved, but he said he had not done anything to move that camera or to alter it in any way. When I was in the laboratory trying to register the images from July second, with the images we collected from July thirtieth, the y direction the vertical was dead on. It was in exactly the same tilted position up and down. The exposition. However, the left and right was off, and I saw what you see here as a sample as an example, that.

41:54 The pillar was offset. When I measured how far it was offset, it was seven pixels, and so that had to be factored into the calculations of the x y coordinates of every window that we were going to measure that. Okay, these cameras, the camera is essentially in the same location. However it had moved by the equivalent of seven pixels on the recording. Okay, once the video had been adjusted by those seven pixels, what did investigator Scott Kodes find. Well, first they went through opening by opening and compared the two videos. Remember there were seven openings either windows or glass doors in the rear of the Halderson home that were capable of emitting lights.

42:39 The red box on the left is the location of the dining room light where Deputy wilk stood waved his light. I frame averaged through to try to see on average where the light fell. And on the right is the location of the flickering window. And you reached a conclusion. Right, So, in the first experiment, the conclusion was that the flickering light on July second was not coming from the dining room light or the dining. Room window rather. Okay, the red block on the left represents. The location of that kitchen window, and the red block on the right is the location of the flickering light from the night or in the morning of July second. And you reached a conclusion there I did.

43:20 So like the first experiment, the second experiment was that the conclusion was that the flickering light was not coming from the kitchen window on July second. We'll keep going kitchen door. Now we're on the third light in from the left at the kitchen door, and you reached a conclusion there. I did. The flickering light was not coming on July second from the kitchen door. Now we're onto the fireplace window, the fourth window in, and you reached a conclusion there. Yes, So in Sly sixty four, the conclusion was clear to me that the flickering light from July second was coming from the fireplace window, the window closest to the fireplace. Okay, just briefly tell us about this slide and why you included it.

44:04 So in Slight eighty seven, this is image eighty three eighty nine from the crime scene video that I recorded throughout the scene, and it shows the window from the inside closest to the fireplace. This is what I've been referring to in the experiments as fireplace window number four. Okay, And it is your conclusion that it was this window that was the source of the flickering light in the early morning hours July second. Yes. The next portion of investigator Scott Koon's testimony is him introducing a video clip that he had prepared for the jury. What he had done was isolate the time period during those early morning hours of July second, when the fireplace window was flickering in the security video footage. He enlarged the picture and sped up the footage so the jury could see exactly what was occurring in that window. Now, the entire video is thirty five minutes long, and it's silent, so even if I wanted to play it for you, there would be no point. So I'll describe for you what we.

45:11 See thirty five a little thirty five minutes long, and again just putting everyone in the right mindset, we're talking about the early morning hours of July second, and in fact, there'll be a timestamp on this correct, That is correct? All right, We'll begin. Playing at around twelve nineteen am, we begin to see the first flickers of light emerge from the fireplace window. That light begins to shine quite brightly for the next eleven minutes. Around twelve thirty am, the room goes dark, but only for a minute. By twelve thirty one, the fire is raging again. The light takes up the entire space of the window and then slowly begins to die back down. At twelve thirty four, a giant flare is visible, even brighter than the previous one, but again it dwindles back down, this time to a low glow that persists.

46:07 This pattern continues for roughly the next two hours. Occasionally the kitchen lights come on for thirty seconds or a minute, but other than that, the video shows the same thing, a bright flicker, a soft flicker, and then a few moments of darkness in between. And we'll continue playing, deputy. I'll just ask a question to put everything in context. In the next twenty minutes to a half hour or so, this video is it's sped up. There's going to be times in which that window grows brighter and then maybe other lights come on. Correct, That is correct, okay, And that'll. Happen in the next twenty minutes or so of the video, but it's sped up obviously.

46:53 At around twelve thirty am, the window grows brighter than looks physically possible. Those four pixels are nearly completely white, and that intensity continues with the occasional flicker for the next thirty minutes. This I'll just note at around two fifty nine you switch to one time speed. Correct. That's correct. And now some additional lights have been illuminated. I think you've identified those as kitchen window, kitchen door, that's correct, some dining room one, and fair to say that just about it. The just before the three am mark, the fireplace window appeared to go dark for a second. There it did.

47:36 That's so called transition around three am from fulbright to dark was rather abrupt, and we think we have an explanation for that. We'll get into it later. By three fifteen am, the fire is burning strong again and continues for about an hour until four to fifteen am, when it appears to burn down a little bit. At four forty five the sun begins to rise, and by five am the picture is too bright for the contrast to distinguish bright and dark pixels from that distance. The fire could have been burning even after that point, but we can't tell. Your view of the camera system and all of your expert analysis in this case. Are you confident that that window that we saw around three in the morning that was very very bright and then just in a kind of in a snap, went's dark. Are you confident that that is the fireplace window? Four?

48:29 Yes, I am no. For the questions cross examination, no, thank you. May this witness be excused? He may be excused and released. I'll make a decision on that at the lunch break. Thank you, youty your excuse from the remainder of today, and I don't think there are any exhibits in front of you. From the hours of roughly twelve am midnight to four am on July second, twenty twenty one, Chandler Holders carried pieces of his parents chopped up bodies from the basement to the family room fireplace. He had a measuring tape to make sure he had cut the pieces small enough to fit inside, and then for hours upon hours, he sat and watched his parents' hands, feet, pieces of their legs, and finally their heads burn. The fat and grease from their appendages dripped down into the flames, occasionally creating flares so intense that they lit up the room so bright it shined like a star and was visible on a security camera over three hundred feet away. Just like nearly every stage of Chandler's plan, this was also flawed, but residential fireplace does not burn nearly hot enough to incinerate human body parts, perhaps a few p pieces of flesh,

50:01 but not entire limbs and heads. What we now know is that what happened on the video at roughly three am, when the fire abruptly went from full bright to dark, is that Chandler had inadvertently created grease fire inside his home in a panic daze an attempt to put it out as quickly as he could, he threw a pot of water on the fire. Yet this created another immediate problem. As you likely know, you can't throw cold water onto blazing hot glass. The slide that protected the fire from the family room was made of glass, and one of the panes immediately shattered. The fire had been extinguished, but now there was hot glass all over the family room floor, which is exactly how and when Chandler cut his foot.

51:00 Coming up on the next episode of Tapes from the Dark, Side will explore Chandler Holderson's movements on the morning of July second. And that was for a purchase of two ten pound bags of ice. Correct Stay tuned till after the credits roll for a bonus clip from my conversation with Smitty. It's going to be relevant to the upcoming episodes. I'm Teezy, I've been your host today. I'm the creator of Tapes from the Dark Side, and I just wanted to take a moment to thank everybody for their patients with this episode. I didn't mean to leave you hanging for this long. I was already running behind when I came down with an ear infection. I debated even telling you that because I don't really like to make excuses, but I couldn't hear for a while. I had to get antibiotics and a couple different types of ear drops. Hearing is almost back to one hundred percent now, and I really can't tell you how much it means to me to have all of your continued to work through this time. Being an independent creator means I kind of have to wake up each day just expecting everything to disappear, or maybe not expecting it, but at least preparing for it. Mentally, you just never know one hundred percent what's going to happen.

52:16 If a hosting company is going to go down, the ad money could dry up, Patreon could burn out. So I treat every day of doing this as a blessing. I truly feel privileged being able to tell stories like this. I know I've mentioned that we don't make a ton of money, and we don't, but I do make enough to do this full time, and I'm so grateful for that. So thank you everyone, Even if you're not on Patreon, if you've just followed the show and you listen to our episodes, that is huge. So thank you for sticking around, thank you for being patient with me. And a special thank you to our Patreon members who really are the backbone of the support of the podcast. So grateful for you all. Our newest Dark signers this month are Shavaughn, I read Anime, Suzie lane Ward, Carrie lank us n nineteen ninety two, Leslie Wilson, Amanda Moore, John Evans, Carrie Leonards, Cassie Hannah, Stephanie Conley, Sarah Clauson, Kelly Young from UK.

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56:16 As always, thank you to Augusta Trevor Oram who created original music for the show. Thank you to twenty six hundred, who allowed us to adapt one of his songs for our main theme before we go today. I just wanted to let you know I was thinking about putting a pool in my backyard. But I was talking to a friend of mine and he brought up a good point about pools. Yeah, there's terribly risky, terrifying things. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight.

56:56 Did he ever open up to you about like cheating on cats, or like having other girlfriends or anything like that. You know what he did? Had one point when I got back to the States, he had said to me, Hey, man, there's this girl I really like. But I kind of fucked up. I did this. What should I do? And I said, honestly, man, if you accidentally cheat on this girl like as you did, or you cheat on her in general, you should just be straight up with her, just fucking tell her went up to that shit, and he said, okay, thanks, but I'm pretty sure he also went was like, well, maybe I can get like a voice disguise or something and say I'm like this person to like prove my location or some shit. So yeah, fuck, I don't know.

57:48 Do you think that's uh, because I know he called his dad pretending to be one of the school. Or whatever. Yeah, do you think he was using some kind of disguiser? I mean it seems like he had to have been, because his dad would have known right away. Right, surely. That's interesting. Oh and did you mention or I might be making this up, but I thought somewhere he might have mentioned you he was thinking about dump dumping cat or breaking up with her. Yeah, he had mentioned that to me that he was thinking about breaking up with her.

58:31 Was that after he talked to you about the cheating thing? Or I'm actually not quite sure. I don't know when the stage of this fucking grand scheme of his that started fucking being a part of the plan. Yeah. Interesting. I mean it wasn't like you were friends with her, so you haven't talked with her or anything. No, just one time before like the like where she had done whatever, I caught her like tat. I just want to let you know it's starting to look like you really did do this. Oh and when I talked to her on the phone. It seemed seemed like a real emotional change. It seemed like a oh, like she tried to make an emotion up. You know what I mean, You're weird. I don't know if I'm just talking out my ass though, So.

59:25 You got you got the feeling that she wasn't to the point where she was gonna accept it yet. I don't know, I feel like She had something to do with it, right, Interesting, a dark side, not