Jesse Weber: Lindsay Clancy Retrial, Thomas Markle FBI Investigation & Caleb Flynn's $100K

There is a lot going on in the world of true crime, and we're going to do a little Hot Mike's True Crime Roundup here. Joining me to go through all the biggest stories on the front pages right now is the host of Sidebar and Prime Crime on Law and Crime, as well as Jesse Weber Live on News Nation. He is said to have the second best hair in the broadcasting game. I'm not sure who would be first on that front, but. Weber, how are you, my good man? I am great. I have to say, second, it's a way to be modest. That's fine. I do have to say something before we get into the law. When you said your wife gave you a hard time about, you know, liking that photo. So if I said to my wife, listen, crazy thing. You know, I wasn't at work the other day. My friend there, she goes, extraterrestrials, Kramer. They took over the office. They took over the set. They've landed the spaceship. She would just look at me and be like, who's she? You've never. You never mentioned to Shay. And so I'm right there with you. Totally. It's happened. Jesse is so good on the crime front and keeps his eyes on all this stuff. We love it. We follow everything. Oh, by the way, dude. I saw, I just watched, binged this show that's been out for a while that I didn't even know about it. I didn't even know about the case, so I feel like I'm kind of was under a rock. Welcome to the family, the Danny Markell story, the, the, yeah, yeah. Oh my God, you guys, this is four episodes. It's on Hulu. The mother. Donna Adelson, Donna, who, you know, talk about she's like the worst of the worst. If you if the controlling Jewish mother is like a stereotype or a trope, this is this woman orders a hit, orders her son to order a hit through the woman who works in the dentist office with them to get her ex to go and kill her son-in-law because she wants the grandkids to live with her. In Miami, and she doesn't like this guy, not good enough for her. This is the craziest thing, and watching her get sentenced was beautiful. Have you seen this? I don't need to see it. I've lived that case for the last nine years. So I covered it when all you had was this assassination of this FSU law professor. They got the guys, right? They got the hit men. They got the middle woman. And then the question is, okay, is it ever going to be linked back to the family? Then the brother gets arrested and charged. And you're like, well, what about the mom, right? The communications between the mom and the son. Then the mom gets arrested and goes to trial. So this has been a saga. And look, there are people who still suspect could there be more arrests. So I've been a part of this the last eight years. It's one of the most shocking things I've ever seen. And honestly, one of the strongest cases of conspiracy and a hired plot to kill than I've ever seen. I mean, through the messages, through the undercover work, through the surveillance footage, it's really unbelievable. And they nab her in this documentary. They nab her in the airport. She's got Harvey or whatever, her husband, who's the typical, he has nothing to say. She dominates. She rolls over this guy. Like, I mean, it's brutal. They're in the airport with one-way tickets to Vietnam. She's searched, where can you avoid extradition? And so she goes off there and catch her. She's about to get on the plane. They pull old Donna back. Then she tries to bribe the girl, the, you know, the, the, the drug addict in jail to like, you know, make, you know, tell a lie and to be her alibi. It is a total mess. But when you see her get, and she was like, she had the dyed hair and she was like looking, you know, just to the nines. And then when they put her in jail, she's eating nothing but carbs. She's, she gets overweight. She gets gray hair. She can't go to the salon. She's miserable. And she goes down and Have you seen what Charlie looks like? I mean, Charlie, that wasn't good. That's the son, right? But I have to tell you. I have to tell you, I have to tell you. That's an interesting way to think about it. Now that's that image is stuck in my head. Here's what's so ironic about these cases, by the way, not to make light of it, but, you know, they the outsourcing, right? The murder for hire. The idea is you hire somebody else, never trace back to you. Those are the cases that leave the largest breadcrumbs back. And whether it's the money trail, the conversations, I mean, I encourage people if they're interested not only to watch that, but just look at the evidence in this case and look at how it progressed. It's really remarkable police work. Four episodes on Hulu. Welcome to the family. Check it out. All right, let's get into some of the things. We got consumed here, Jesse, when it came to the Caleb Flynn trial, right? To refresh this, Caleb Flynn claimed an intruder, shot his wife, Ashley, 37, broke his heart. Tip City, Ohio, right in their home, middle of the night. All Prosecutors said he staged the scene. His 24-year-old mistress, where are you, Aaliyah Botner? We sort of miss Aaliyah. She was a big star for a minute. right. They convicted Caleb on all counts. He is in the Ohio State, whatever it is, Rehabilitation Center. He's got. Big problems, he's in there for life, of course. New development yesterday, Banner Life Insurance filed a federal interpleader suit in Ohio asking the judge to decide who gets Ashley Flynn's life insurance payout, which is a little over $100,000. Caleb was the sole owner and the beneficiary on the policy. But why can't he collect? Is it similar to the Nick Reiner situation? Glad you mentioned that. This is actually relatively straightforward. This has happened before. So, Ohio has this law. It's called the Slayer Statute. Makes sense, right? You can't profit if you're responsible for someone's death, okay? Not every state has it, by the way, but it's basically enshrined in a number of different ways. You can't profit off a crime. Now, Nick Reiner's a little different because Nick Reiner's saying he was entitled to money that was never paid to him years before his parents were killed. So it's a little bit different, but this one makes sense. Now, the thing with this life insurance company goes, well, if you look strictly at the policy, you know, he's the sole beneficiary. If he can't collect for whatever reason, it's supposed to go to his estate. And now they say, look, we're We're in a legal issue. We don't want to be a part of this. Got family members who say they have claims to the money. Court, can you just take the money? Can you just decide this? Can we get out of it? Because we don't want to be liable. If we pay out to the wrong person, we could be subject to this lawsuit and this lawsuit and this lawsuit. And I looked it up. It is actually very common for a court to take ownership, take possession of that money as they sort all this out. And by the way, they've even done it in cases where there wasn't. A conviction yet while there was just an indictment. So I feel fairly confident to say that this might be the most straightforward part of this case where the court takes possession of this money and tries to figure out who's going to have a claim to it in what capacity. It should go to her parents, right? I mean, after all that they've, yeah. The kids, the kids that trust for the two daughters. Yeah. And by the way, the insurance company would be entitled to legal fees and costs. So that has to be subtracted from it as well. Jesse, why is Boston such a hotbed for true crime? Why are we always talking about Boston? We are. So let me just tell you. It could be. Let me just tell you, I just covered, I covered Matthew Farwell. I covered Karen Reed. I don't like to criticize law enforcement. That's not my thing. I don't like it. But what are you seeing in a number of these cases is where they're botched investigations and when it looks like, right, when it looks like there could be a situation that justice wasn't served and there was a coverup and a lot of it is happening in this one area in Massachusetts. And I don't know, one thing is leading to another. It's unbelievable. Lindsey Clancy, probably the biggest thing to come in. We've had Farwell just happened yesterday, right? He's going away for guilty across the board. Thank And then you got, you know, Karen Reid, which was huge. Lindsey Clancy, I think, is maybe even bigger than Karen Reid, close, where it stands now on November 9th. Judge Billy Sullivan, William Sullivan, denied the motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds, you. which clears the way for the retrial. Also ruled that he denied the prosecution's gag order, which means we continue to get more of Big Red, Kevin Reddington, and denied the defense bid for records on the holdout juror. So it's denied, denied, denied. They're back in court on Monday, this coming Monday, the 16th. What do you imagine happens here? Do we finally set a retrial date? Because they love to have hearings to plan the next hearing. Yeah, I mean, that's in like every case. Look, I think the D.A. had said that he's waiting to see what happens in this hearing before making an official announcement. Look, if you ask me, I think they're going to retry her on first degree murder. And by the way, let me just say, I'm not surprised by Judge Sullivan's ruling here. I mean, I followed it. I thought it was a creative argument to ultimately say double jeopardy. Right. Because the idea is, is like they said you were too premature. In declaring a mistrial, that when you got these juror notes that perhaps a juror wasn't following the law and not following the law in reasonable doubt, you should have done a further inquiry. And he's like, didn't I do that? I did a further investigation. He said that under the law, he had absolutely no choice but to declare a mistrial and try to investigate that juror. Now it's moot. It doesn't make sense. And, but I thought it was interesting, double jeopardy because basically the defense was like, well, we can't be in a position. Where, you know, if there is a case and the prosecution feels that they're messing up, they can move forward for a mistrial and it's granted and they get a do-over. That would be double jeopardy. It's a good argument. Didn't work here. Completely different circumstances. If you ask me what's going to happen, they're going to retry on first-degree murder. I actually believe there is enough evidence to convict her on that. And I will tell you this, they have to change their strategy. I think there's a number of mistakes that they made in that first trial. And I think when you listen to the jurors, what was the number one thing they said, Billy? The prosecution. didn't show enough empathy for Lindsay Clancy. They were too cold-blooded with it. They were really focusing so much attention on her faking her suicide. They just got to change their tone. I think what they have to do is focus less on this idea of a fake suicide. I think they spent a lot of time on that. I get why they did. But I thought their strongest part was the closing argument at the very end of the trial and focusing on the evidence to suggest that this was planned, that this was premeditated, that there was an effort to make sure Patrick was out of the house, that when she spoke to him on the phone, forensically, those kids were already dead and she knew it and didn't tell him the truth. I think the more they focus on If it was a conscious choice, that's how you get to first degree murder. And that's how they can get a conviction. It still doesn't. I don't think it works, though, because, I mean, she she clearly, you know, she has the support. She's got a great track record in the hospital, everywhere she worked, everyone, all the schools and things. The postpartum psychosis still, to me, is the only explicable. Reason for for for her to do this. I mean, how do they get around that? She just no one's saying that she yet no one's saying that she didn't have. Severe mental illness. And one of the things that they said in the closing was, you know, she had more opportunities and access to help than other people do, than other single mothers who go through postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis. And I think that's a battle that the prosecution has to go through. But at the same time, it's not just if you have mental illness. It's not just the standard. It's if you have such severe mental illness that you couldn't control your behavior, you couldn't appreciate right from wrong. That is why it's such a high burden. That is why it's such a high standard. And that's why it's usually not. successful. So I think if the more the prosecution focuses on planning and preparation and that she knew what she was doing, that it was a conscious choice. And they also focused on the idea that she knew something was going on. She was having harmful thoughts and she didn't seek the help and didn't tell her medical professionals. That is going to be a game changer, maybe or maybe not. It's very hard to predict which way jurors are going. And by the way, trying to get a fair and When this became the biggest case in recent memory. Good luck. Good luck. There's not one person in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who has not heard of the Lindsey Clancy trial and doesn't have a strict opinion on it, I would think. That's fair. It's funny you say that. I've covered a lot of cases, right? And sometimes I'll go into, I'll ask people as it goes into the end of trial, which way you think it's going to go. I don't know. I don't know. Everybody I spoke to is either like, she's guilty or she's not guilty. That's it. Like, there was no gray area. All right. Let's talk about Thomas Markle. This guy, what a situation here. He cut off his ankle monitor. That's the latest we have. A spokesman for Meghan said she's willing to cooperate with the FBI investigation. Separate tabloid reports are saying she wants the interview to be done in the UK. We don't know if that's confirmed or not, but either way. Charges, one federal count of possessing child sexual abuse material up to 20 years if convicted. The FBI seized about 78 items, slides, films, film negatives, books from two LA storage units that he's rented since 2008. The DOJ alleges the material includes explicit photos of himself with prepubescent girls, if that doesn't make you vomit in your mouth. Other countries, Mexican authorities are involved. They say there's a Rosarito, Mexico storage unit. The Philippines is where it all began when his son, Thomas Markle Jr., turned in four boxes worth of stuff from his father. It's truly disgusting. But on Friday, the FBI arrested him at a senior care facility, and then he was at home detention. And he cut off his ankle monitor. A lot of people are saying he did it to say, you know, because he's out of his mind. They still don't know if he's, you know, mentally capable to stand trial. What do you make of all this, Jesse? Good luck on that argument. Look, I have multiple thoughts about this. First of all, by the way. This is not going to be the only charge, not going to be the only charge. It's a placeholder charge for now. There's going to be more. And there's one thing also to say that when someone's allegedly possesses child pornography, it's another thing to say you're allegedly in the photos. OK, that's that's a whole other situation now. The ankle monitor. I get it. People are like, oh my gosh, he's not in his right mind. He's cutting off his ankle monitor, right? Because competency is different than insanity. Competency is basically like, do you understand the charges against you? Can you assist in your defense? My theory is, why did he cut it off? I mean, did he not cut it off because he realized he didn't want to be tracked? And I think that's a clear argument for the prosecutors to be like, He's a flight risk. He knows what's going on. He understands he's in trouble. And I think it will help to show that he is mentally competent. But look, that's an independent investigation that has to be done, an independent analysis. And competency can be a big issue. It can delay a trial for quite some time. And him now being locked up, I don't know. I think that could be a big problem for him. Yeah, he stands. So the psychiatrist competency report is due eight days from now, Friday, November 20th. So until then, his side says it's sick lies. Well, if you're crazy and you don't know what's going on. How can you even characterize it in any way? He says, you know, all not true. The tapes will tell. You know, if one thing that I've heard is on those tapes, that's enough. Big question here. And I don't know if this is a legal question, but just maybe asking a handsome guy with good hair. Meghan Markle said she was, you know, given a letter. With the allegations about her father years ago, she chose to, you know, take the information and keep her children away from him or keep him away from them to protect him. Is she a victim? Some people are saying she should have done more because she got the letter in 2018. And for seven years, we never heard a peep about it. And in those seven years, how many kids was he harming? I don't know if that's fair, but, um, so look, I think we also don't know the full story. We don't know for the full information, but it raises questions about what exactly did she know? And if she handed it off, did she do any kind of follow-up about it? And then it becomes a separate question. And by the way, I mean, yeah. And it becomes a separate question about, right? Like now people understand why she wanted to create a distance between her father and her family. I'm curious, did the Royal family know, right? Like, so in this idea of, How could they not know about these allegations regarding her father? I mean, do we expect that the crown would have absolutely no idea about this before Prince Harry is about to embark on a life with her? I'm a bit skeptical about that, but I think there's some tough questions and those questions will definitely be asked if she sits for an FBI interview and whether those will ever be published or ever become publicized. Probably not, unless she becomes a witness in this case. But I think those are fair questions and tough questions that maybe she has to answer. But again, I don't have the full picture of it, and I don't know what her knowledge is of all this. Yeah, speaking of the UK, lots going on over there. I mean, Russell Brand, of course, has gone away for 10 years. Maybe it's going to be nine years. There are Brand supporters, by the way, who say... This isn't fair. There was no evidence. These are 25-year-old claims. Is the law different in the UK than it is here that they have no statute, right? I mean, you can prosecute whenever. Look, you're talking to a guy who sat through the Harvey Weinstein trial in New York back in 2020, and the majority of that evidence was based on, you know, the accuser's testimony. There weren't text messages, there weren't surveillance footage, there wasn't videos, like there was in the Diddy case. And I think what you're dealing with there is, can you build a case purely on credibility? And I think one of the aspects of the Russell Brand case that people have a lot of difficulty with is this idea of how can it be a consensual series of acts. And then you're saying one part of it was not consensual under the law. It can be as black as white, black and white of that. If you do not consent to a particular act and it's forced against you, that's sexual assault. That's rape. And look, I think also it doesn't mean it was a slam dunk case. This is a jury, by the way, let's not forget. They also acquitted him of some charges. She said, I did not consent to the second part of this sexual engagement that we were having. I did engage to the first, but not the second. He says you did. But why is it that because of all the others that say, well, there's just where there's smoke, there's all that smoke, there's got to be fire here. Look, jury has to weigh each count independently. They have to weigh the credibility of every witness. And I'll say this, this is a jury that acquitted him on certain charges. It's not like they came in and came with a verdict within 20 minutes and found him guilty across the board. When I see a jury split like that and split on the charges. I think they carefully consider the evidence, and in their opinion, they believe that there was sufficient evidence to find that he committed these crimes. Now, he's going to appeal it. We'll see if there's any issues that were raised during the course of the trial. Maybe it was prejudicial to have all these women testify at the same time. I don't know if that's under UK law, if that's a way to potentially get an appeal. We see it sometimes here in the United States. But I think we also have to be careful about what we're saying here and rushing to judgment and just saying if one person, you know, if you assume that she agreed to something in that sexual encounter, she must have agreed to everything. Not so not so fast. And we also know that our understanding of sexual assault and rape has changed dramatically than it did 20 years ago, that it's not just if someone maintains contact with someone who abused them or says, I love you, that that means they're lying. It gets a lot. more complicated and provides a lot more psychological issues that we've learned about in the last several years. Jesse Weber, I know you got a heart out here right now because you got to run off to your next thing. So I'm, you know, I've got 18 more things, but we're going to do it again when you'll come back because your hair belongs on this screen next to mine. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're number one. You're number one, but I don't want to tell anybody, but you're the number one hair. Jesse Weber live on News Nation. You have a lot going on, pal. I'm really, really happy for you. I'm so good at it. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Good seeing you. There goes one of the greats right there. Very smart guy. Lauren Mincer-Clark, by the way. Yeah, there's Thomas Markle. Oh, should we do this behind his back? Let's just make sure Jesse's gone before. Oh, he's still watching, I think. Jesse, don't need to... I can't leave yet. I can't leave yet. What are you doing? I'm telling them I'm running late. I'm telling them I'm running late. Let's... How do I vote? We've got a staff right here. Harry built the pole. Lauren, by the way, first booked Jesse Weber on Crime Watch Daily back in the day. You've known Lauren a long time, haven't you? I have. She's the best. Hi. Good to see you. Hi. We do. We go way back. Our show, Crime Watch, started in L.A., but then we moved season two to New York, and we had to find all new talent. And Jesse and I, and that was it. And Chris Hansen. Chris Hansen. By the way, I want to hear a great story real quick about Chris Hansen. I love Chris Hansen. He's a good friend of mine. Okay. Real quick. And then I'll leave. So we're on the street filming in New York city. Okay. Woman comes up to Chris. He's sitting, he's standing there. I want you to imagine sunglasses on, just looking off. We're like in a break and a woman comes up. She goes, Hey, Chris Hansen, I want to be on your show. And without breaking a beat, he goes, trust me, you don't want to be on the show. And I'm like... Alright, alright. The helmet wars are raging right now. There's a lot of ones. There's some twos. I mean, this is really, this is like who would split the baby on two great helmets like this? I don't know. But, um, but I love it though. Yeah. Yeah. Look at that. They're like, why are you late? Why are you late right now? All right. All right. So as long as I got a couple twos, that's all that I need to know. Guys, you're the best. Thank you. Thank you.