Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson

Transcript

Hi, everyone. This is Jillian with Court Junkie. Court Junkie is a true crime podcast that covers court cases and criminal trials using audio clips and interviews with people close to the cases. Court Junkie is available on Apple Podcasts and podcastone.com. I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And we are the prosecutors. Today on the prosecutors, Pablo Velez junior has been behind bars for nearly 20 years for a murder he may not have committed. Hello Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett, and I'm joined as always by my merry co host, Alice. Merry Christmas, Brett. We are so close to Christmas while recording this, although I have no idea when this is getting released. Yes. Christmas Eve Eve as we record this. Everyone's saying that we're ready to call. Forget our families. Yes. Exactly. What is Christmas holidays? This is this is way more fun than hanging out with our children while chestnuts roast in the open fire and Jack Frost, Nip Citronas, and all those things. Anyways, so, yeah, Merry Christmas to everybody. It's probably January, late January by now. So I hope you had a great Christmas. I hope you had a great New Year's, all that stuff. Well, yeah, we're kinda catching up actually because usually we're about 3 or 4 weeks ahead. For a while there, we were like 3 months ahead because we knew Alice was having a baby. But now it's getting a little bit more more relevant. True, you guys are in 2025 right now, but hopefully you appreciate our Christmas spirit overflowing for you. The countdown is always happening for me. Like, the day after Christmas, I'm like, 364 more days. Here we go. So we're always approaching Christmas. Exactly. Exactly. And, look, we have for you guys a really fascinating case tonight. We like doing these innocence cases every now and then because, frankly, a lot of people who who were said to be innocent are not. And we think it's important to highlight those cases because those victims matter and frankly, they're revictimized every time someone says that their killer is innocent. See, EG, Scott Peterson, who yet again as if we needed another mainstream retelling of his sister in law's fantasies about his innocence. That is happening again, but not to digress, but we also like to look at these cases because on occasion, rarely, I would say, people who claim to be innocent actually are innocent, and we like to give these cases a fair look. And that's what we're going to do with Pablo Velez junior. And excitingly, we're returning to Alice's favorite place in the world, Texas. Now did you ever live in Houston? I always get I always forget where all you live. Of course I did. That's where that's where mister Alice and I actually got married. So Houston's, like, very special to us. Awesome. Did I grow up in Houston, but that was where we got married and where I had my second job, not first job. Oh, that's right. And I think you still have family in Houston. Right? I mean, I wanna go over your whole life story, but No. You can't. No. So we've talked about clerkships after you graduate from law school. So I clerked for 2 different judges in Houston. I don't wanna compare it to residency for med school because it's much less difficult than residency is for doctors. But it means that you get to see a lot of the city because a lot of their people just moved there for the year. And you travel because it's part of the 5th Circuit, so we go to New Orleans and kinda get to know the city really well, especially because we're hearing a lot of the cases from that area, often criminal cases. The 5th Circuit is kind of weird. This is purely inside baseball that most of you won't care about, but most circuits, and you can correct me if I'm wrong in this, Alice, but I don't think I am, most circuits hear cases in multiple cities. So the 11th Circuit will hear cases in Birmingham and Montgomery and Atlanta and Jacksonville and Miami. Am I right? The 5th circuit only hears cases in New Orleans? You are it is possible to hear outside of New Orleans, but no one ever does it because the reality is everyone wants to take their government per diem and go hang out in New Orleans. So I think I mean, there's nothing illegal about hearing it in Houston, but in my many years of practicing before that circuit, it's never been in Houston. And another funny inside baseball, the 11th circuit where Brett clerked and the 5th circuit used to be 1 circuit. And so every time you cite to a case that is pre split of the 5th to the 11th circuit, you have to say this is before the split. So that's why it's binding precedent when you're talking about an 11th Circuit case but you're in the 5th Circuit. That's really inside baseball, but that actually is relevant for purposes of precedence, which is something we've covered in legal briefs. And even more inside baseball, if you cite a case from the 5th Circuit, you cite the most cited case in American history, City of Bonner v. Prichard, which is the case that says that all prior 5th Circuit cases are binding on the 11th Circuit. You don't have to cite it, but I always do just to add to that tally of how many thousands of times it's been cited. And as a matter of fact, usually, cases outside of a circuit aren't really I mean, they're what we call, persuasive, but they're not binding. But I always cite 5th circuit cases as if they're living in certain cases. Even if they happen after the break, I just feel like there's something more. They're they're they're more than sister circuits. Right? They're like conjoined twins that got halved. There you go. There you go. That's that's one way to put it. That's one way to put it. That's a pretty good that's pretty good. That's a great analogy. Just Thank you. We plan these, by the way. We do this we do, like, a whole we record the whole episode before we go live, and then we go live We practice our dance moves. Like, it's just yeah. Like, this is just out of the blue when we get back. Really hard on this banter that get us 1 star reviews. Exactly. Exactly. So for those of you keeping track, you know, this is like minute 5 or so when we get to it. So whoever always posts that on YouTube, make sure you let people know the discussion of the case is starting right now. And so this case takes us back to July 15th, 2,004 and on that day at about 2:0:5 a. M. A fight broke out at the perfect rack Sports Bar and Grill, which is a fantastic name for a sports bar at 2033 Magnum Street in Houston, Texas. A man named Adrian Paian pulled up in his car with his friends Emerson and you know, this is gonna be one of those that's gonna challenge my southern pronunciations, but Emerson Bayarquez and Esteban Escobar Rodriguez. He got out of his car and walked towards the door intending to confront a man named Jason Woolley Jason was standing at the door and said words to the effect of you trying to run up on me At this point, he did a really stupid thing. He pulled out a 9 millimeter pistol and then he did something even stupider. He fired a shot into the ground and, you know, I can say having prosecuted a lot of these cases, seen a lot of these cases prosecuted, the number of shootings that start with someone either firing a gun into the ground or into the air are incalculable. Because, of course, what's gonna happen when somebody fires a gun is anybody else in the area who hears that, who has a gun, is automatically gonna pull their gun and a lot of times just start shooting. And we're talking Texas, so this actually does hap this is not I know because I not only lived here, but I heard cases clerking for judges here. People just literally start pulling out guns and shooting, and there will be we had cases come before us where, like, a 150 shots were fired because someone heard a shot, and it was like some stupid kid firing a gun into the air. And then a lot of people get hurt, obviously. Yes. And that's what's going to happen here. At this point after he fires this gun, 2 other men who are in the parking lot, they pull out their guns and begin firing just in the general direction of this group. Pan was shot and wounded. Now at this point, he actually managed to run around a 130 yards across the street to a school bus corral where a whole bunch of school buses are parked and hid under a bus, which was probably pretty smart of him. Escobar, remember Esteban Escobar Rodriguez, he escapes unwounded, but Emerson, Bjorquez, now no one had actually seen him get out of the car, but apparently he had. He was shot and killed. There were at least 3 shooters involved in all this and 2 of them got into a gold Cadillac and drove away and obviously a gold vehicle. You know? Let me just go ahead and tell you. You know? We always like to give advice to those of you who wanna commit crimes. If you're gonna commit a crime, do not use a gold car. Do not use a gold gun. Do not use gold things. Because if you use something gold, people are going to remember you and it's going to lead to you being convicted of a crime later on. In this case though, has a twist. It turns out that the owner of the gold catalog was Pablo Velez junior, and a witness to the shooting would pick Pablo out of the lineup as one of the shooters. And if this is sounding like an open and shut case, maybe we should just go ahead and end now. I will tell you. 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So that's it. Like a lot of these shootings in the middle of the night that happen with some sort of disagreement, those are all the facts. So let's start with the timeline. On June 10, 2004, a resident of the Sandera Briar Grove Apartments witnesses a shooting by a man she describes as Hispanic, 6 foot 1, £230. The police arrive, and they collect a 40 caliber shell casing that they will later connect to the perfect rack shooting. This description matched that of a man named Ronald Leo Strandberg, who was a bouncer at the perfect rack. So if you are interested in kind of casings and how to analyze them, we've talked about this on legal briefs with an expert from ATF who talks about using the NIBIN system to compare these bullets because it helps you to know if one shooting's connected to another one, especially if you have no leads. You can begin to hone in on who was at both of these places at one time? And that's what they have here. So a security guard writes down the license plate of a white older model Oldsmobile as f 68 f z c. This, however, matched a plate belonging to a Kia, not an Oldsmobile. But a slightly different plate, f 68xzc, so if you're not great at remembering these things, that was just a difference of one letter, matched the car of Ron Strandberg, that bouncer who worked at the perfect rack. And this will all become important later. I do wanna point out because it's relevant. So in this case, as Al said, you have this 40 caliber shell, which we use ballistics to match to a gun and to other shells. This science comes under attack probably because it tends to connect people that people want to believe are innocent to crime scenes. Look at this situation. So you have the 40 caliber. It's matched to another round at the perfect rack shooting. And you have the man, Ronald Leo Strandberg, matches the description of the person who's at both places. What a coincidence if ballistics is not a science. And then we match the Oldsmobile to him as well. It's just something worth pointing out because in our jobs, we see ballistics generate leads like this every single day. Thousands upon thousands of cases where this science is used. And yet, if you listen to some true crime podcast, you'll be told this is junk science. And I just want you guys to be educated on this because we want you to have the information when you're listening to cases and you're evaluating this stuff. And it is a simple fact that you can use bullets from guns, shell casings from guns to match to different shootings, and we do it every day. So this brings us to July 8th. So remember, back in June 10th, we have the shooting. We have this guy named Ronald Lee Strandberg. He's a bouncer at the perfect rack where we know there's gonna be a shooting later on. He has this car. He's driving this white Oldsmobile. By July 8th though, he is no longer driving an Oldsmobile. He is driving a gold Cadillac, one registered to Pablo Velez. And how do we know that? Because on that day, July 8th, he takes the car to E Race Performance to have a stereo installed. And we'll get back to that information and why it's important later on. So July 13, 2004. This is going to form the basis for what is going to lead to that shooting. It's not probably not surprising to you that the events of July 15th are connected to an earlier incident and that incident occurs on this day. So on July 13th between 1 and 2 am, so toward the end of the night when all these things happen, right, is always right before closing time, people been drinking, things go wrong. Then you have sort of the kind of story that you would see in a justified episode or like a bad CSI. So you have a 9 year old man named Adrian Paian, and we know about him. He is involved in that shooting. It's gonna happen later on. He's at the perfect rack. He's there with one of his apparently multiple girlfriends, Monica Espinosa. And according to Adrianne, he gets up to use the bathroom and Monica follows him to the men's room because she wanted a cigarette and, you know, I I Alice's Alice's jumping the bed to jump in on this, but as some of you know, occasionally there will be bars or even airports. If you go to Charlotte airport, it always freaks me out, and there'll be people hanging out in the bathroom, like, handing you something to wipe your hands with or selling you things such as cigarettes, and that's what's going on here. There's a man in the men's restroom who is selling cigarettes. Sounds like a kid trying to tell their parents, like, a version of the story. I went to the bathroom to buy a cigarette, a totally legal thing that you can smoke that I'm age appropriate to smoke. Yes. Yeah. And then look, a lot of unreliable narrators in this case. And this one, this feels weird. Right? Okay? This feels so strange. Because she didn't just say, hey. Buy a cigarette from the guy in the bathroom for you guys. For me. Right. Or you're in a bar. There's probably someone with a cigarette nearby. Yes. Exactly. Especially in 2004. Anyway, whatever the case, they go into the bathroom together. Adrian goes to the urinal to do his business. So Monica, she's in the bathroom and she she apparently is is trying to buy a cigarette from the man. But at the same time, she makes what is described as a suggestive remark to Adrian. I'm not entirely sure what that suggestive remark is. I'm sure you all can use your imagination. Feel free to let it run wild. So she says this thing to Adrian And another man in the bathroom makes some quip back to her. Unclear what that quip is. Once again, let your imagination run wild. And Adrianne like 1 AM, everyone's been drinking. You can imagine he's probably saying something also suggestive back to her and boyfriend in the urinals, like, you know, stupid things are happening, basically. He responds accordingly because Adrian, he's a man of commitment. Right? He's so committed to this one of his multiple girlfriends. If somebody says something to her, my goodness, he's gonna respond. So he responds and of course there's a back and forth, words are exchanged and eventually he leaves the bathroom. So the other man, the one who made the quip back, he has now left the bathroom and so you might think that's the end of it. It is not. He actually leaves the bathroom and he gets some of his boys. They come back into the bathroom and they attack Adrian. So he punches Adrian in the face, hits him in his left eye. The 2 other guys are beating on him. During this altercation, he described seeing what he described as chunking the Texas syndicate Longhorn sign. So, Alice, I assume you are a member of the Texas syndicate. I mean, I assume it's just the Longhorn sign, like, if you're a if you're a Texas fan. But, like, you you I don't know. It's aggressively, you know, like, you chunk it. Aggressively. It's just aggressively. No horns down, horns up. And then, you know, you see chunking it at at this person indicating that they were Texas syndicate because, of course, this is a bar frequented by members of various gangs and I guess at some point this becomes gang related. So they have this whole fight. There's a 4th man there. He actually throws Monica against a wall because she's trying to jump in to help Adrianne. So everything is breaking down. There's a big fight happening. So we mentioned that Monica is not Adrianne's only girlfriend. In fact, one of his other girlfriends, Claudia Beltran, was also at the bar that night, and she confirms this story. So I guess they all know about each other. I guess that's not what the fight is about. The fight is not about multiple girlfriends. I love that he's there. He's there at the bar with one of his girlfriends, and one of his other girlfriends is there too. And it's fine. It's no big. It's fine. In fact, they are each other's alibis. Yeah. You know, I gotta I gotta give Adrian some props. I mean, he is doing something. I'm not sure what it is. I'm not gonna say he's living the dream because it's not my dream. I can barely put up with with 1 woman and a podcast cohost. Much less having 2 girlfriends. I mean, that just seems really difficult. But, nevertheless, he's doing it, and they're they apparently like each other enough that they're as you said, they're providing alibis for each other. Right. So after the altercation occurred, Claudia, the other girlfriend, said that Adrian came up and told her what had happened. So, basically, she doesn't see what's happening, but this is kind of the close in time to when it happened, confirms, you know, later testimonies of it. And so he tells her what we just heard. Now there was another fight that same evening at the perfect rack, and this one occurred in the parking lot. Five people were arrested in this fight. There were 4 men and 1 woman. And though this fight was not related to the fight with Adrian in the bathroom, there may have been some overlap. I don't hang out at these sorts of bars, but having seen a lot of police reports, this is not uncommon around the 1 to 2 o'clock hour at bars certainly in Texas. I will say that. Certainly in Houston. So just keep in mind, there's the, like, comments back and forth, punching in the bathroom with Adrian, then there's another fight where people do get arrested in the parking lot. Now members of 2 different gangs were involved in both of these altercations. Additionally, one man, Wayne Garcia, may have been involved both fights. Now he only admitted to being involved in the parking lot fight, but witnesses like Claudia and her friend claim that Wayne may have also been involved in the bathroom fight. It's around the same time. Things are heated. It's not that far fetched to believe that at least someone is probably involved in both fights. And we're throwing a lot of names at you, and you're trying to keep them all straight. Just know that most of these people don't really matter and you're just there are a lot of people who were involved in this fight. And one name you may have noticed has not come up yet is the subject of this podcast, Pablo Velez. There's all these other people, members of gangs, all sorts of people who are fighting. They're building a beef here. There is some bad blood that is starting to bubble over, multiple fights, multiple gangs, all sorts of stuff happening at this place and you've got Claudia who is important, who's seeing all this. She is present for both fights. She's present for the fight in the bathroom or at least she sees it happening. She's present for the fight in the parking lot. She sees it happening, and she's gonna end up being a star witness for the prosecution in the case we're going to discuss. So now Adrian doesn't name these men in his 2,004 statement. However, police received information from an anonymous source during the investigation that one of them was Richard, aka Shorty, Cisneros. Now furthermore, during the 2017 reinvestigation of the crime that would follow, Adrian identified 3 of them as Richard Shorty. He said that this was the man at the urinal. Ron Strandberg, the man who held Monica at the door preventing her from helping Adrian, and Jason Wooley. One of those names you're very familiar with, Ron Strandberg. Ron Strandberg is the man who matches the description of the earlier shooting. He is the man who took the gold Cadillac to get a radio installed. He is the bouncer at the bar. Then you have Richard Shorty Cisneros and sometimes, occasionally, people are called Shorty because they're really tall. Well, it's like, you know, tiny. If you're called tiny, you're probably huge. Right? Shorty is short. He is like 5 5 foot nothing. Basically, is why he is called Shorty. And then you have Jason Woolley who I think is a new oh, he is the one. He was the one standing at the door who fired the gun into the ground that that famous moment earlier on. So these are the individuals who we've seen at this fight. Okay. So let's fast forward July 14th 15th. So on July 14th between the hours of 12:52 pm and 4:44 a. M. The following day, there are 51 calls between Ron Strandberg, Shorty Cisneros, and Jason Woolley. So those 3 men that we just mentioned who were involved in this fight in the bathroom. 37 of those occurred before the shooting that happened and 14 occurred in the couple hours that followed the shooting. So we have the shooting that forms the basis of our story, the one that happened at the Perfect Rack after you had these multiple fights the day before. There's going to be a shooting, we're trying to figure out who was involved. These 3 men, the same 3 men who were in the bathroom who were involved in the shooting, are exchanging a lot of calls around this shooting. Once again, there is a name that we have not yet to mention. It's the person who is this the the subject of our podcast. And I promise at some point we're gonna start talking about him. During this time, Pablo Velez junior is not involved in any of these calls. He is not called by any of them, and he does not call any of them. Now when you start talking about all these phone records, Brett, you and I have, like, stared at so many phone records in our subpoenas before, and all I have to say is it's like the bane of my existence because they're so boring and they are not as straightforward as something like suspect 1, call suspect 2 at this time. They're like random numbers, and you have to match the numbers, and then you have to figure out if it was a hang up or you know? In other words, there's a reason why these call analyses take a long time because I'm thinking about going to trial with these 51 calls and establishing all 51 calls and how they happened and in what order in a narrative form to one calls and how they happened and in what order in a narrative form to help the jury understand what's happening. I only say this because we are pretty spoiled in the true crime world to know these facts because it's presented at some point in a case. 51 calls. But in reality, 51 calls could be like an all day testimony by a cell phone expert to get that into evidence. So just know this. It's not as simple as, like, clicking your fingers to know these types of things. You have to sit there and match up phone numbers and figure out what happens with all these cell phone records in order to tell your story when you're the prosecution. On July 14, 2004 at 9:0:2 PM, Pablo, the guy who we said we were gonna talk about at top of this episode, makes a phone call in Wilmer, Texas, which he testified was made at a truck stop. Now Wilmer, Texas is a 3 and a half hour drive from home. So Pablo was driving an 18 wheeler, and based on kinda just maps, he likely did not get home before 12:30 AM if we have this call from Wilmer, Texas at 9 o'clock. Around 10:30 PM, Claudia and her friend Nancy Almanaz arrived at the Perfect Rack. Nancy used to work there and went to the pool hall this evening to speak with the manager about getting her job back. Around the same time, Wayne Garcia, Luis Trinidad, and Fernando Chamayo also arrived at the Perfect Rock. Now when they got there, they played pool with Jason Wuley and 3 other men. Shortly after they arrived, Nancy was filling out her job application when she saw a fight break out outside. She saw a man in a red shirt fighting with a smaller man, and the man in the red shirt would later be identified as Jason Wuley. I know that was a lot of names. Kind of the operative thing here is we have a time stamp on where Pablo is at 10:30, and it's not in Houston, Texas. It's somewhere probably between Wilmer and Houston. But at 10:30, we have Claudia and Nancy at the perfect rack, and we see a fight happening. Pablo is not there. Yeah. Things are already getting heated at the perfect rack. We already have a situation that's starting to boil over again. So let's fast forward to 11 PM. And I will note, Alice mentioned this earlier, Pablo, he's driving this 18 wheeler, that's his job. He drives trucks. He's at a truck stop. He's probably not gonna get home till around 12:30. This is important because the prosecution's theory of the case has him getting home at midnight, about 30 minutes before probably his earliest arrival time. As we've said before, the prosecution's theory, we just did a legal briefs on this, prosecution's theory is not evidence, but it is meant to help you sort of conceptualize and their theory of what happened. And we'll see how the fact that he may have arrived home a little bit later actually does have an impact here. It's not necessary for the crime to have occurred, but if you're trying to decide whether or not Pablo was involved, it probably is important. Okay. So it's 11 pm. Now we're going back to Adrian. Yo, Adrian. So Adrian Payan. Now remember, I just want to try and keep this straight because there are so many names. Adrian is the one who was at the perfect rack with his 2 girlfriends that went into the bathroom and ended up getting in a fight with multiple men including Shorty Cisneros, Ron Strandberg, and Jason Wooley. Jason Wooley is currently at the bar and we know from the story earlier, at some point, Adrian is going to show up there and confront Jason Wooley. So 11 pm, we have Adrian. He's back in the story. Now, according to him, Claudia actually calls him to say that there was a guy at the perfect rack with his hand wrapped up and she suggested that he come by and see if it was the same guy he got into a fight with earlier that week. So Claudia, basically, you know, usually you get in a fight, If you punch somebody, it's gonna hurt you. Maybe not as much as it hurts them, but it's gonna hurt you. I mean, his hands wrapped up for a reason, probably because he punched somebody. Claudia is being a troublemaker, and she is calling to let Adrian know this. Now we're we're telling you what actually happened. Her initial statements to the police was more like, oh, she was warning him, don't come because it might be the guy who you got in a fight with. That is not what happened. She is absolutely calling him to tell him, hey, that guy who beat you up, I think he's here, you should come by and see what you can do about it. Right? So Adrian, of course, is going to go to the perfect rack but Adrian remembers what happened last time. So Adrian, he's smart, this time he's not gonna show up by himself. He brings Escobar and Emerson with him. They arrive at the perfect rack. So they go to check it out. At the same time multiple these other people who were there are leaving. So Adrian, he shows up. He's he scopes out these people and, you know, the people he's seeing this Wayne Garcia, he's seeing this Luis Trinidad, he's seeing this Fernando Chamayo. Remember, those guys weren't involved in the fight. Those are not the people who were fighting him. So when he shows up, he sees those 3 guys leaving. He's looking for 3 guys. He sees those 3 guys leaving and he says to himself, those aren't the guys. She's got this wrong. So he decides to leave. So he leaves the bar again. Now at trial, Adrian would testify that he saw Pablo Velez walking out of the perfect rack with these 3 men even though this was not part of his initial statement to police. This would seem to be very important, of course, because it puts Pablo, our suspected murderer, at the perfect rack the night of the shooting earlier in the night. But there's a problem. This is literally impossible. Pablo could not have been there at the time because he would have been driving his truck back from Dallas. He's a really excellent alibi for most of the night. He's driving his truck back from Dallas and in fact, only minutes later at about 11:0:5 PM, he actually makes a call and his phone pings a 111 miles away from the perfect rack and as we have learned, this is another piece of evidence you can use in cases despite what some people tell you. Cell phone pings are very accurate. So if it's saying he's a 111 miles away, he's a 111 miles away. So he's not there. This part of Adrian's testimony is erroneous, but I'm certain it had some effect on the jury in just putting Pablo in the area of where the shooting is going to happen. So this night is rolling over into the 12 AM hour. So technically, it's July 15, 2004. So around midnight, Pablo's driving log shows him arriving back, but this actually doesn't match his phone pings. Of course, inaccurate driving logs are almost required for truckers. My understanding is, like, the time logs are not very accurate for truckers because they have certain rules of how long they can drive, for example. And so sometimes the numbers are fudged a little bit because they wanna make it faster or whatever. You get paid by the miles, I think. So you want to get places faster in general. And I think it was probably important for him to finish this run by the end of the day. I don't know why exactly. I don't understand all the rules for truckers and how that works, but I think it was important that he'd be done by midnight for the purposes of, you know, maybe his when his next run could begin. There's all sorts of regulations on how much truckers can drive their trucks, that's why most truckers have 2 sets of books, the official one that they show to the authorities and the real one which records their actual amount of time they spend on the road. So he has this, and this will be introduced at trial. And this is something the prosecution will use to say, look, here's an official document, and it says he got there at midnight. So he must have been there at midnight because it says it on the log. Right? That's gonna be their argument. He wasn't there at midnight. Right. And, of course, there's even human error with writing in a log, but what we have, of course, is his phone pings. So at 12:13 AM, Pablo's phone pinged in Spring, Texas when he makes a phone call. That's nowhere near home. It's still a ways outside of Houston. At 12:40 AM, Pablo left the Mobil gas station on I forty 5 in Airtex after dropping LG homes there. Now this is 30 minutes from Pablo's home, which means based on all his earlier phone pings, this is right on the right timeline. Around 1 AM, Pablo himself says he arrives home, and that matches the latest ping we had from the gas station when he drops someone off being 30 minutes away from home. When he gets home, he showered and ate a bowl of Lucky Charms. At 1:45 AM, Pablo came so he left to go to his ex girlfriend's, Anel Pina's home, a 30 minute drive away. Now at trial, she refutes this claim. And that'll become important. We'll spend a lot of time on it. One thing I wanna note is I really appreciate that you called it mobile. This just says the Alabama in you, but it's the mobile. Oh, it's mobile. Is it a mobile? It's mobile. But that's fine. Mobile works. I like it. Know what's funny? Of course, I knew that living in Texas, but but now I'm thinking in the ways of Alabama. Yeah. Oh, that's embarrassing. No. It's not. Gas station. I should definitely know this. Everyone I know works for one of the gas companies. What's interesting about this case is so many cases, you have these innocence claims. They they depend so much on the words of loved ones. Right? I mean, the number of times where the alibi we absolutely should believe is the mom or the sister or the dad, right? And we just take them at their word. It happens all the time. Here, you know, a lot of this is backed up by cell phone pings and things that just can't be denied It is interesting the girlfriend issue. She is the ex girlfriend and she was the ex girlfriend at the time Like I said, we'll talk about it more, but this is an issue for Pablo It's gonna become an issue for Pablo at trial because if he is trying to fabricate an alibi, that is something that the prosecution can point to and a jury can grab on to as evidence of guilt. There's all sorts of reasons you might fabricate an alibi. Maybe because you're just scared, maybe because you really believe it but you're mistaken or maybe because you did it. Obviously the prosecution is gonna say he's making this up because he knows where he was. He was shooting somebody and he really needed her to say that he was with her because this was the one part of his alibi that we don't have some sort of independent verification for. So that's why he's doing this. Okay. That brings us to 2 AM. So this is closing time. I don't know if it's closing time for everybody in Houston or if this is just a closing time for the perfect rack, but it is closing for the evening and patrons are beginning to leave. Just before this, Claudia calls Adrian again. And this time she tells him that Woolly, Jason Woolly, remember one of the guys he got into a fight with is at the pool hall and that he wants to fight him. And so she's like, you should get back over here. So Adrian, he's still looking to avenge himself from the last time he returns. And once again, he's got Esteban Rodriguez with him and Emerson Bjorquez with him. So they get out of the car, at least Paine and Rodriguez do. Remember, we we don't really know when Emerson gets out of the car, but at some point he gets out as well. But initially, it's going to be Adrian Payan and Esteban Rodriguez. They get out of the car and they are walking to the front of the pool hall. At the front of the pool hall, once again, you have Claudia Beltran, who's there, Nancy Almanza, who was her friend, and Jason Woolley, who was the person that Claudia called him about. Jason Woolley is standing there, Payne sees him and he thinks this is one of the guys that I was in a fight with. So they're walking towards the pool hall. Beltran points towards Woolley. Now he's wearing a red shirt, remember he got into a fight earlier on. At this point, this is when Willie makes a comment about them rolling up on him or whatever and pulls out his gun and fires a shot. So Payne and Rodriguez, they turn to run, other shots start to be fired from guns all over the parking lot. And I know we've already said it once but this is just this story is so familiar to me. It just happens all the time. So one shot is fired now everybody else is opening up. So Beltran, she is standing near Woolley when he fires his gun and she sees a man in a blue shirt with what she describes as a long gun standing near a gold cadillac in the parking lot. Long gun, I assume means some sort of rifle maybe like an AR or something like that. I mean it could be a shotgun, but I think she would say a shotgun. I think he has some sort of rifle. He does not have a handgun. He's got something else. So the shooting's beginning and all this happens. They see the man in the gold Cadillac. At some point, they sort of they're all chasing each other, they're fighting each other. These people jump into the gold cadillac and they drive off. Now Beltran and her friend Almanza, they get into Beltran's car and they start following the gold cadillac, which I don't know if this is brave or stupid, but that's what they're doing. They are now in the car chasing this vehicle full of people who have just shot people there after them. And there are 2 of them. So one of them memorizes the first couple letters of the gold Cadillacs license plate number, Almanza. And then Beltran, she memorizes the last part of the license plate number. And then they write the number down in her Bible, which she has with her, which I love. You know, you're at the bar calling your boyfriend who you share with a couple of the people to come back to the bar to get into a fight, but you got your Bible with you in your car. So she actually writes down the license plate number in her Bible using her eyeliner. Once again, it's like something out of a movie. I mean, this is this is like a Quentin Tarantino film. That's sort of what I'm imagining in my head. In other words, it's already starting to sound a little bit more like a setup. Like, they were working if 2 people who are shooting jump into the same car, me as the prosecutor trying to put the story together is, oh, the first shot was, like, a reason to allow for plausible deniability. Well, I clearly didn't shoot anybody because I shot the ground, but me shooting allowed other people to start shooting indiscriminately except someone wasn't shooting indiscriminately. They were lying in wait to make the shot. And, basically, no one can point fingers because the person everyone saw shoot shot it at the ground. Tailors all the time, basically. This is a really fascinating question because remember all those telephone calls that are happening between the 3 men who had been involved in the fight the day before. The guys who had jumped Adrian and beat him up. Now they're obviously having a lot of calls and it feels like an ambush like you were saying. But the person who seems to be setting up this ambush is Claudia because Claudia keeps calling Adrian and telling him to come back to the bar. First was sort of this vague assertion that she thought the guys were there, but then with the very specific, this person wants to fight you, the person who, as Alex said, just so happened to fire their gun into the ground, which then led to the shooting. But then Claudia, who it feels like to the world was setting Adrian, her boyfriend, maybe she went happy the fact he had another girlfriend, I don't know, but who feels like she's setting him up. She's the one who jumps into the car with her buddy and starts chasing him down the road. So I don't know if it kinda was a setup, but it got out of hand or if Claudia sort of became an unwitting part of this setup because they really wanted to lure him back and they sort of goaded her into calling her boyfriend and getting him back over there to sort of defend her honor or something. There's some stuff going on here that we don't know and we'll never know. But one thing to know is that they probably were familiar with each other because these people have been at the perfect rack, like, multiple times in the same week. Your theory of maybe they're goading Claudia either wittingly or unwillingly to be part of a potential ambush is very plausible because I don't think they are complete strangers. Right? They have at least seen each other several times this week alone. Now Claudia and her friend, Almanza, then returned to the perfect rack where they found Payen, who had been shot in the back. That's when they discovered that Bellorquez was lying dead on the sidewalk near the spot where Claudia had seen the man in the blue shirt emerge from between the cars in the parking lot. Now, ultimately, both Jason Wuley and Pablo Velez junior were arrested in connection with the shooting. Pablo was arrested when police discovered that the gold Cadillac belonged to him. After they made that discovery, they showed Claudia Beltran his photo and a photo lineup, and she pointed to Pablo's photo saying that's the man in the blue shirt. That's who I saw. Now both men were ultimately convicted of murder. Pablo Velez junior was sentenced to 30 years in prison where he remains today. Hey, guys. We're back, and we wanna talk about Gabb Wireless, the premier technology for anybody out there with kids who's concerned about what they're viewing on the Internet and what they're able to access with their smartphones and their devices. If you have young kids like me, it's not just another new year. It's a chance for the epic family trip. Another round of themed birthday parties. Another year closer to getting a phone for your kids, and there's nothing that will make you more nervous than that. That's where Gab comes in. 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In fact, Gab's phones and watches are built with smart filtration that proactively blocks harmful content before it ever reaches your kid. I cannot recommend Gab enough. And if you got kids, I know you're thinking, this is something I wanna jump on, and you should. Right now, Gab is offering $25 off any device with no contract required. Just go to gab.com/ prosecutors to get started. That's gab, gabb.com/ prosecutors. Gab.com/ prosecutors. Terms and conditions apply. So right after closing time, I guess, right after all this chaos ensues at 2:20 AM, according to him, Pablo arrived at Anel's house once again. Remember, she refutes this to authorities. So that's his alibi. So there's these, like, 2 potentially competing timelines. But Pablo's words are he drove that 30 minutes, and at 2:20, when all this chaos is ensuing at the perfect rack, he's actually at Anelle's house, except no one can back up his story. And let me just say, as someone you know, it's very hard for me when you listen to these stories not to interject myself into them. I always try and not do that. But I have to say, if I had just been driving an 18 wheeler all day and I had gotten home at 12:30, I'd eaten my lucky charms and going to bed. I wouldn't have been going to the bar to shoot people. I wouldn't have been going to a nail's house. I'd have been going to sleep. Now, Bob Lowe apparently, that's not what he did. And the prosecution, their theory is he parked his truck, he got home, maybe he had some lucky charms. Maybe not. He jumped into his gold Cadillac and he headed over to the bar for a drink. His story is now I went over to my girlfriend's house and she's gonna say that didn't happen. But what we do know happened is or at least according to Pablo and according to the cell phone records, at 5:15 AM the next day, Ron Strandberg, remember him? He calls Pablo and asks him to report the gold Cadillac stolen. This is the first time, by the way, we mentioned all those phone calls between the various people. This is the first time one of them calls Pablo. It's at 5:15 am that day. And he asked him to report the gold Cadillac stolen. Now you might wonder why he would be making this call. Remember, the Cadillac is in Pablo's name. But according to Pablo, he had actually given the car to Ron on the condition that he take over the payments. Pablo had bought the car, but he could not afford to make the payments and rather than have it just repossessed and I guess do terrible things to his credit, he gives it to somebody else who can make the payments. Now the car was never transferred into Ron's name so only Pablo could actually report it stolen. So Pablo calls Ron back and tells him that he will report the car stolen, but it does not appear that he ever actually did that. We have these two phone calls. The reason you have to believe Pablo here, right? I mean, this is what Pablo is telling us. That Ron is asking him to report the car stolen. He's saying, okay, I'll report it stolen. He never does report it stolen. I don't know exactly what happened during this phone call, but this is what Pablo says happened. So on August 7th, fast forward another month, the police respond to a call about a shooting that took place at Buffalo Fred's Ice House. And once again, there had been a fight outside and shots were fired and guess who's there? Ron Strandberg, Jason Lilly and Richard Shorty Cisneros. According to some witnesses threatening people who had been at the perfect rag shooting. A friend of Emerson Bojorquez, he was the one who was killed, his father was pistol whipped and actually had his teeth knocked out by the men during this fight and he would actually testify that he was shot at by someone in this group. Despite this happening and despite his testimony and despite his obvious injuries, there was no police report ever made about the shooting that may strike you as strange. It might strike me as strange. But honestly, a lot of these things remember, what's the purpose of this? This is about people who may have been at that shooting and what they saw. It's about intimidating people. Are those people who've now had their teeth knocked out and been shot at, are they going to just turn around and call the police? Probably not. That's the whole point of the incident, and no police report is made that there is testimony about this fight. And that's the end of the timeline. And what you may have noticed is that there are a lot of repeat players, but Pablo hasn't really appeared that much except the presence of really his gold Cadillac and maybe these two calls that he says are about the gold Cadillac. This case, there's not a ton on it. It's not like a lot of the cases we do where there's a lengthy trial and there's all sorts of information. This is actually a pretty condensed case, but that may strike some of you as unusual, but I'll just go ahead and tell you. The cases that we are all familiar with, the murder cases that we watch, the cases that go on for a month, those are the exception. Even most murder cases are short. They don't have that many witnesses. They are not complex. They're very straightforward. You can imagine how a murder case like this would go. You have a couple people testify about what happened that night, you have someone identify the shooter, you have the police officers testify and then you're done and that's essentially what's gonna happen in this case. So next week, we are going to talk about the investigation. We're going to talk about what led the police to arrest Pablo and put him on trial and eventually convict him. We're gonna talk about what Pablo says happened and what the evidence says about this case. Really, this all comes down to what happened between 12:45, 1 o'clock and 2 in the morning when Pablo would have arrived back home and when the shooting occurred. And is there evidence that he was there? And what is the evidence that was there? Remember, there is good evidence. His vehicle is there and there's an eyewitness who says he is the one who did it, Claudia Beltran. Now you may already be questioning her credibility, but she is going to be a very important witness and we're going to talk about what she actually said while she was on the stand, but that's what we're gonna do next week. So, Alice, do you want to answer a few questions? I think the people deserve it after having watched a rave happen at the beginning of this episode. It's true. Those of you who are listening when this episode comes out, if only your patrons, they're the things you would see. You can't even imagine it. Sometimes we're not as professionals as maybe we should be. I'll just say that. Okay. It's Christmas Eve Eve. It is Christmas Eve Eve. And since this was a relatively short episode, we will you know, used to be this was how long our episodes were, but episodes have gotten longer and longer and longer and longer. It's like everything else. We just can't we can't shut up. So so we'll do a couple of questions today. See if there's any Christmas questions. Do you have any Christmas questions since it's Christmas time? I already asked you what your favorite Christmas movie was. Mhmm. I'll ask you the question that I asked Alison Sweeney, who was with us a couple episodes ago. Can you go in there? Here for that. I know it was amazing. Just Are you really gonna do that after that was my, like, Christmas present to you? It was amazing. It was great. It was awesome. Thank you, Alice, for having a baby. And thank you, Allison. Ali. Thank you. We're now Thank you, Ali. Sweetie. Best friends. She's awesome. Which, by the way, she has a new movie coming out soon. So I can't really watch it. I know. There's another one with that prosecutor in it. I'm a big fan of big fan of prosecutor. Anyways, so the question that we asked and that she answered was favorite Hallmark Christmas movie and famous Christmas movie overall. Oh, man. I'm not sure I remember the Hallmark movie Christmas names because I watched all of them. Yeah. I I've seen all of them. In fact, when I had my baby, all I did was watch Christmas movies. I watched every Christmas movie on Hallmark. So now the problem is, like, Hulu has their own. Netflix has their own. I know. You know, all of the streaming services have their own. It's not a problem. It's a fantastic problem to have. But, really, I just I like them simple. I don't want it to be complicated. I don't want it to deviate from the script. I just want it to be in a small town with beautiful lights, snow, but it doesn't look too cold. But Lindsay Lohan has been killing it with these Christmas movies. I don't know if you've seen them, but they're hilarious. They're really funny. I've already answered this question last time, and I answered with Snowman's, of course. But the Hallmark movies, they have this series. I don't know if they did one this year or not because I think they're running out of pronouns, But it's like time for pronoun in there to come home for Christmas time for you time for me time for us time for them to come home for Christmas. And they're all good. They're every one of them is good. They're all different. They involve the song in some way. Allison Sweeney was in one of them. They're all really good. So any of those movies, excellent. When you when you have a winning combination, you just go with it. Okay. Overall Christmas movie? Overall Christmas movie. Have you answered have we answered this before? This is hard. Yeah. Because die hard. There's multiple. Right? I know what we're we're gonna be watching as a family, like, tomorrow, and that's because we have small children, though. We're gonna be watching Elf. Home alone is too scary for them still, but I love Home alone. And there are now classics that were not that wouldn't have been classics a few years ago, like Love Actually, The Holiday. I would count those as classics now, but they're not classics in the sense of, like, Home Alone and Christmas with the Kranks or something like that. You know? We used to watch Love Actually every year. I wish it's been a while since we've seen. I love that movie. It was great. That's Some people I used to watch that every year, but now with kids, it's a little hard to do that. Yeah. That's things. Ruin everything. I don't mean Everything. But they do make it harder because there've been several things I've wanted to watch, and I'm like, oh, I can't watch it. That the kids go to bed. And then if kids go to bed, I'm tired, and I go to bed. Exactly. So I never get I never get to see it. So I do love that, actually, because it's hilarious. And It is hilarious. Anything for Hugh Grant to dance. You know? And if you just go with it, just be happy, people. Quit being so, like, naked, like, everything. Yeah. The Jack Black and Jude Law. That's just like a happy movie. And Kate Winslet, just, you know, just a happy movie. This person wants to know, what's your favorite Christmas recipe to make? So today, I baked. Well, I I hate I'd hate to bake it, but I love to eat it. I hate baking molasses cookies because molasses are terrible to work with. But, like, molasses, gingerbreads are so yummy. But I like gingerbread like chewy cookies, not the crisps, and not, like, too soft, but, like, the true like, it tastes like molasses. But I really don't like working with molasses because it's slow as molasses. I mean, I like to cook, I guess, and I and I'm good at cooking something. Things. You can say what you like to eat. There's no yeah. I mean, for Christmas I look. I love pecan pie. I love it. If you can get a bourbon pecan pie, like, the farm we go to has They have you had their bourbon pecan pie? Their bourbon pecan pie is It is incredible. It is really good. Really good. Another thing with molasses in it. It's very, very excellent. Alright. Let's say next. What? Is it a good one? This is from mommy wicket, and she wants to know if we have ever considered running for president and vice president. Never. What would be the first thing you change? And what was your running slogan be? Well, first of all, we can't run for president, vice president because we're from the same state. 1 of us would have to move. One of us moves. Yeah. You can't be from the same state if you run for There you go. There's a technicality. Yeah. And I'm not running without you, so there. Case closed. What would your running slogan be? We'd have to do something about ending true crime or, like, crime. I we're already in the, like, celebrity politician world anyways. Not that we're celebrities, but, like, just really leaning into the whole true crime thing. There you go. Yeah. Tough on time, obviously. The prosecutors, that's obvious right there. There there you go. On the thing that I would change, I mean, I would either have legislation about college football and the NIL situation, which is out of control, or, I mean, I might have to jump into this debate on daylight savings time and what the time should be. Oh, I I've been campaigning on that since I was a kid. Oh, I can see. Savings. Just just stick just stick with the time. I did not realize that there were people who like standard time. And for me, like, if we're gonna have another civil war in this country, this may be when it's over. Because I cannot live in a 100% standard time. I can't do it. There's a reason that standard time only lasts like 3 months at this point. No one likes standard time. We've shortened it as much as we can. Daylight savings time is the way. That way the day lasts longer. I know it's a little darker when you get up. Who cares? You're getting up. This is the problem. It's morning people. They ruin everything, and they're trying to ruin the time. It is morning people. And I'll just say if it's standard time forever, just keep changing. I know I don't want standard time forever. I would rather I'd rather change 3 times a year than do all standard time. I think So there we go. We don't talk about politics. You didn't know you were that But we're talking about this because it's too important. I didn't know you were this passionate about I mean Daylight in standard time. It gets dark at, like, 4 o'clock here during standard time. There's nothing more depressing than leaving work. I am. And it's already dark. That is just horrible. Awful. Yeah. I'm I'm there with you, too. All right. Let's run on true crime and daylight savings. Yes. More daylight. We're gonna we know more daylight. Not you vampires can just move somewhere else. Turn out a light. Yeah. Get a flashlight. I mean, come on. Oh my gosh. Anyway and it's always like and they always just like all political cowards, they hide behind the children. Like, what about the children having to go to the bus? What children? Are they getting up to hoe the fields? Like, poor little Timmy's hoeing the field at 5 AM. He needs the daylight. Timmy should be going to school. Oh, god. Yeah. Anyway Alright. So that's my opinion on that. I think probably with that, we should, call it a day. I will say this for those of you who've missed it. We now have a substack, which I still even know what a substack is. I don't know why it's called a substack. It's like the new MySpace page. Yeah. Exactly. It's like MySpace for nerds. So we have a substack where we are writing things on various issues around true crime, and also other people are involved. Jason Blair is basically our editor. He's writing stuff. People who are interested in true crime in various ways are writing stuff. If you're interested in writing something and having it on our Substack, submit it. We would love to take a look at it. And, basically, we just want to talk about true crime, highlight sort of ethical true crime people, talk about some of the issues that are going on, things that we talk about on the podcast. But for those of you who maybe would rather read it, you have that option as well. So I hope you guys will subscribe. Most of the stuff is free. I think we are gonna have a few sort of exclusive things for people who are subscribers. We're still kind of working all that out, but check that out. It's called the True Crime Times. Links are available in various places. I'll make sure to drop it in the show notes for this. And there's also we're on Twitter. So follow us on Twitter. All that stuff. That's our newest thing. So support it. Anyway, anything else you wanna talk about, Alice? No. Merry Christmas in January when you guys hear this. But really, Merry Christmas, Brett. This is when you texted me earlier, you're like, it's Christmas Eve. Wanna record? I'm like, of course. It's all I wanna do. What would you rather do? Nothing. Not spend time with my adorable baby. Exactly. Babies. Babies. So many of them. Yes. So absolutely. Merry Christmas to all of you who are in the chat right now. Happy New Year to everyone who's listening. It's a great thing about the podcast is because we record so early. You get to hear, you know, most of you were in late January and maybe you need a little pick me up. We're bringing you some Christmas spirit to you where you are. So Merry Christmas in January. Love to hear what you think about this case so far. See us an email prosecutorspodgmail.com@prosecutorspod for all your social media. Follow us on the gallery which is on Facebook great discussions always there join patreon. You can watch us record these early for as little as $3 a month and you get all the episodes early and ad free as well Alright, guys. So we're gonna try and wrap this up next week, but until then, I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And we are The Prosecutors. Fancy. I was, like, just about text I was just about to chat to everybody. Go home. Brett's gonna have way too much fun tonight. Okay. Nothing's going on, guys. Brett's having way too much fun. What are you doing now? Auto tuning us? Auto tune, that would be cool. Oh, my gosh. This is exactly how everyone wanted to spend Christmas Eve Eve. Okay. We're just not recording tonight, are we? What is this? I just Just so that I know this. This is This is why you know that this is how you know that we're good friends. I'm not even questioning what's happening. I don't know what's happening. Yeah. Pluto TV is the place for movie fans like me. And TV fans like me. They've got something for everyone, and it's totally free. 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