351: Jesse Valencia

Ryan Kepner was lying in his bed in his apartment in the East Campus of the University of Missouri. It was some time around 3:30AM on the 5th of June, 2004, and he was trying to sleep. But then he heard some thumping noises coming from next door, followed by a man repeating: “Stop it. No.”

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Speaker 1: Columbia and Missouri. Sits in the heart of Boone County,

roughly halfway between Kansas City and Saint Louis. It was

founded in eighteen twenty one and grew from a settlement

into a quintessential college town, shaped almost entirely by the

University of Missouri, which opened its doors in eighteen thirty nine.

By the early two thousands, Columbia had evolved into a

community of around one hundred thousand people. It's welled by

tens of thousands more when students returned each fall. The

university's East campus sprawled across the eastern edge of town,

a maze of apartment buildings, Greek houses, and aging rental properties.

Wilson Avenue cut through this neighborhood, lined with basement apartments

and walk ups, where you could hear your neighbors through

thin walls and floors. It was the kind of place

where noise complaints were common, where parties often bled into

the early morning hours, where the sound of college life

became the soundtrack of everyday existence. But in the early

morning hours of the fifth of June two thousand and four,

Ryan Kepner heard something else. He was lying in his

bed in his basement apartment, trying to sleep when he

heard it noises coming from across the hall. He assumed

his neighbor was returning back home from a party. He

was probably drunk and clumsy, But then he heard a voice.

It was a man saying, over and over again, stop

it no. Jesse James Wade Valencia was stopped on a

Chicago street one afternoon by a stranger who wanted to

photograph him. It wasn't hard to see why. Jesse was

striking and confident. He had an easy smile that drew

people in. That chance encounter led to a Gucci underwear

ad in GQ magazine in two thousand. But modeling was

never going to be enough for Jesse. He had bigger plans.

He was born on the twenty second of February nineteen

eighty one in Boyle County, Kentucky. He grew up on

his grond parents rural farm. After his parents divorced when

he was just a baby, His mother, Linda, raised him

alongside his two sisters, Maria and Rachel, and it was

on that farm, surrounded by family, that Jesse developed the

charisma that would divine his life. He was the only

boy in a household of strong women, so he learned

easily how to charm and connect. By two thousand and four,

Jesse had traded the Kentucky farmland for a basement apartment

on Wilson Avenue in Columbia, Missouri. He was twenty three

years old, a junior at the University of Missouri, studying

pre law and journalism and building a life that was

filled with possibility. His apartment was modest, but it was his.

He stuck up a small print out of the Virgin

Mary on his front door, with a political joke pinned

up nearby. Professor Ain Worthington remembered the day that Jesse

pursued him about his Ancient Greek history course. The winter

class was already full, but Jesse wouldn't take no for

an answer. He recollected. He basically grabd me by my

lapels and said, look, I'm really keen on this subject.

I know it's full, but can you let me in

the course? Worthington did, and in class Jesse was quiet

and thoughtful, but in one on one conversations he was

energetic and lively. To pay his way through school, Jesse

worked the night shift as an auditor at the campus

in While most of the college town slept, he stayed

awake through those quiet hours, and whenever things were slow,

he'd sit at the motel computer, writing mostly class papers

and political editorials. Jesse was also openly gay, in an

era when that still required real courage. He'd come out

to his mother as a teenager, and Linda's response had

been immediate and unwavering. She accepted her son completely. That

support gave Jesse the foundation to live authentically. He went

on dates, form deep connections, built friendships within Columbia's LGBTQ

plus community. Jesse refused to hide who he was. In

March of two thousand and four, he published in a

page onion piece in The man Eater, the university student newspaper,

which was titled let's same sex couples Marry. It was bold, unapologetic,

and pure Jesse. He called out the political manipulation of

gay marriage as a wedge issue, dismantled religious arguments against it,

and asked pointed questions about the sanctity of marriage in

a society plagued by divorce and adultery. He wrote, gays

want to marry to carry on private intimate relationships, not

to see how many husbands or wifs they might acquire.

Jesse was a member of the Doctor's Fork Baptist Church,

keeping ties to his Kentucky roots in his faith even

as he carved out his new life in Missouri. He

was building something, a career, a community, a future. But

there was something else Jesse had told his mother years earlier,

something that stayed with Linda long after he said it.

As a teenager, Jesse confided that he felt he would

die young. He couldn't explain why. It was just a feeling,

a premonition that hung over him like a shadow, and

he was right. It was just after two pm on

the fifth of June two thousand and four when Matt

Finikine and a couple of friends stood in a parking

lot near the corner of Wilson Avenue and Williams Street.

They were loading up their car for a trip to

Saint Louis. The afternoon was warm, the kind of early

summer day where college students spilled out onto East Campus,

restless with the freedom that comes after finals. Matt glanced

over towards the grassy area between two apartment buildings, a

strip of lawn that students cut through as a shortcut,

unremarkable except for what was laying on it now. At first,

he thought it was just another drunk student sleeping it off,

not uncommon in a college town, especially on a weekend.

But something made him look to twice. The flies gave

it away. There was a cloud of them, buzzing in

a way that made Matt's stomach turn before his brain

fully caught up. He stared for a few seconds, his

mind refusing to accept what his eyes were telling him.

Then it clicked. It was a body, a dead body.

Matt's hands shook as he called nine one one. The

operator dispatched paramedics and police immediately, but while en route,

she asked Matt to check for a pulse. He approached slowly,

every instinct screaming at him to step back. Matt would

lay a recall. He was obviously dead. He had a

big open wound on his neck. It was Jesse Valencia.

He lay on his back in the grass, wearing only

tight blue running shorts. His torsa was bare exposed to

the June sun. There were bruises blooming across his chest

and his neck. His throat had been slashed from ear

to ear. It was so deep that it went all

the way down to the spine. Blood had pulled beneath him,

soaking into the grass, and the flies had already begun

their work. Within minutes, the quiet stretch of East Campus

transformed into a crime thing. Students gathered at a distance,

some crying, others standing in shocked silence as officers moved

through the scene. The autopsy findings would later reveal the

full extent of what Jesse endured in his final moments.

He had been put in a chokehold until he was unconscious,

then somebody had held his head back and slashed his throat.

There was no evidence of sexual assault. Jesse had bled

to death from the catastrophic wound to his neck. The

time of his death was estimated to be in the

early morning hours of June fifth, which meant that Jesse's

body had been lying there for ours before Matt spotted it.

Students had likely walked past without noticing, assuming like mad

initially had, that it was just someone sleeping off a

rough night. Detectives began the painstaking work of retracing Jesse

Valencia's final urse. Where'd he been, Who'd he been with?

Did he have plans to meet someone that night. Every

detail mattered. Witnesses came forward with pieces of the puzzle.

Several people reported seeing Jesse walking home from a party

in another East Campus building somewhere between three and three

thirty a m. He'd been alone, heading back to his

basement apartment on Wilson Avenue. Matt, the same student who

discovered Jesse's body, lived just six feet from where the

body was found. Matt said he'd been awake until around

three thirty that morning and hadn't heard anything unusual, no screams,

no signs of a violent struggle outside. It quickly became

clear that Jesse hadn't been attacked on his walk home.

He had made it back to his apartment safely. There

was no sign of a struggle inside, no indication he'd

been dragged out against his will. Jesse had walked through

his door, locked it behind him, and he should have

been safe for the night. But then detective spoke with

Ryan Kepner, Jesse's neighbor in the apartment across from his

basement unit. Ryan told them he'd heard something noises sometime

between three thirty and four am. Then he heard Jesse's

voice repeating the same words over and over. Stop it, No,

stop it, no, Ryan said, The impression I got was

that he was trying to kick somebody out of the

apartment that didn't want to go. After a while, I

yelled back at the wall, saying, yes, stop it, because

I couldn't get to sleep. Then it was over. The

noise stopped. Ryan had gone to bed after that, assuming

it was just a typical college drama, a party guest

who didn't want to leave, an argument that had gotten loud.

When he woke up the next day at two pm

and saw Jesse's apartment door standing ajar, he figured that

Jesse had just had a rough night and forgotten to

close it properly, and had even planned to apologize for

yelling through the walls, not wanting any bad blood between neighbors,

but I didn't get the chance, he said. As the

investigation intensified, the spot where Jesse died became an impromptu memorial.

Students left candles, flowers, and handwritten cards. Detectives cast a

wide net, reaching out to Columbia's LGBTQ plus community for

any leads. They showed Jesse's photograph at the Soho Club,

then headed to a benefit show for Columbia Pride, the

city's annual gay Pride event. One of the club performers

made an announcement from the stage, we lost a member

of our community this weekend, before explaining why police were

there asking questions. Jesse hadn't been a regular at the club,

but he had been to a few shows. Friends remembered

that whenever he was there, he always requested the same

song from the DJ, Michael Jackson's Billy Jean. There were

immediate fears that Jesse had been targeted in a hate crime,

an openly gay man murdered and left in public view,

but Captain Mike Martin quickly addressed those concerns and said

there's been nothing to indicate this was a hate crime. Instead,

detectives believed that Jesse had brought someone back to his

apartment that night, someone he knew, someone he led inside willingly,

and as they dug daber into Jesse's life, they discovered

a sacred that would crack the case wide open. When

interviewing people that Jesse knew, detectives learned that he had

been having an affair not just with a married man,

but with a married police officer who had a newborn baby.

At home, Stephen Rios had built what appeared to be

a picture perfect life. He and his family lived in

a nice home in a safe part of Columbia. He

joined the Columbia Police Department in October of nineteen ninety

nine and had cultivated a reputation as a community minded officer.

He mentored school children, served as an administrator for the

Columbia Police Foundation, and sat on the city's Substance Abuse

Advisory Commission. By all outward appearances, he was exactly the

kind of officer a community wanted on its force. But

Stephen Rios was living a double life. He'd first met

Jesse Valencia in April of two thousand and four, just

two months before Jesse was killed. Rios and other officers

had been called to break up a party on East Campus.

While his colleagues questioned the hosts, Jesse approached the scene,

Rayel sparked at him, get off the porch or I'll

arrest you. Jesse never won the back, Dawn responded, do

what you have to do. Ray also asked him for

obstructing a government operation and drove him to the station.

But during that drive something shifted. Rios began peppering Jesse

with personal questions, invasive questions about his sexuality and his

personal life. The part dynamic was crystal clear. Rios was

a uniformed police officer with Jesse in the back of

his patrol car, effectively trapped. The next day, Ryo showed

up at Jesse's apartment. They slept together, and an affair began.

Over the following months, Ryo showed up at Jesse's basement

apartment without warning, often unnoticed. He'd tell his wife he

was on judy, then slip away to Jesse's place for sex.

The affair was consuming, intense, and, as Jesse would eventually discover,

built on lies. One night, one of Jesse's casual partners,

Andy Shermerhorn, was at the apartment when Rios arrived. What

happened next was deeply disturbing. Andy was coerced into participating

in sexual activities. Jesse Beggeddandy not to tell anyone about

what had happened, and Andy kept quiet, at least until

Jesse turned up dead. Only then did he come forward

to tell detectives what he knew. As spring turned to

early summer, Jesse began to suspect that Rayos had been

lying to him about his personal life. He didn't know

that Raos was married. He didn't know about the newborn baby.

When he started pacing together the truth, Jesse was horrified.

On the second of June, just three days before his murder,

Jesse told the friend, I'm really going to ask him

this time if he's married or not, because I really

don't want to be involved in a relationship with a

married man. It also called his mother, Linda to tell

her about the predicament. He told her he tried to

end the relationship, but Rios wouldn't let go. Linda remembered

those conversations with chilling clarity. He called us over and

over to say he was terrified of this man. Linda

had urged her son to file a complaint with the

police department, and Jesse promised he would, but no complaint

was ever submitted. Perhaps he was afraid, perhaps he thought

it wouldn't be taken seriously a civilian complain against her

respected officer, or simply he simply ran out of time.

As detectives investigated Stephen Rios, they uncovered something else. Jesse

wasn't the first person to be afraid of him. An

unamed woman came forward with the story that they dated

back in high school. She'd been just fourteen years old

when Rios, then a junior, fixated on her. One day,

she found a note stuffed in her locker. I didn't

even know him, then, she recalled. It was creepy that

he somehow knew her locker combination, but she tried to

brush it off his teenage weirdness. Then there was another note,

this time Ryos left Disney stuffed animals in her locker.

The attention didn't stop after graduation. Years later, Rayos was

working as a police officer in Waynesville when he pulled

over the woman's mother during a traffic stop. He didn't

ask for her driver's license or registration. He only wanted

to ask about her daughter. The mother recalled, he stopped

my daughter for five years. He showed up at every

one of her soccer games. He would call her at

two thirty in the morning, drunk and try to get

her to go out with him. For five years. Rios

told this woman that they belonged together for five years.

She rebuffed them. It was a disturbing pattern of obsession,

of refusing to accept rejection, of using his position as

a police officer to maintain control and contact. Now detectives

had to consider had Jesse Valencia tried to end their relationship.

Had he rejected Stephen Rios and had Ryos, just like

he'd done with the woman from high school refused to

accept no for an answer. The pieces were falling into place,

and they all pointed in one direction. After several witnesses

came forward to tell detectives about Jesse's relationship with Stephen Rios,

the department issued a statement that seemed designed to close

the door on that line of inquiry. We have thoroughly

investigated all information we have related to this case. This

information was handled in the same way as all other

tips we received, and we have nothing to indicate this

officer as a suspect. Kiss closed, or so it seemed,

But there was something odd about Rios's movements on June fifth,

the day that Jesse's body was discovered. Rios hadn't been

scheduled to work that day. He should have been home

with his wife and newborn baby. Instead, computer records showed

he'd visited a police substation where he accessed the dispatching

system to review the computer screen showing the activity of

on duty officers he was monitoring the investigation in real time.

Then he drove to the main police station and approached

two sergeants with an offer he could make a positive

identification of the victim. He knew it was Jesse Valencia.

As word of the affair spread throughout the department, Rios

began a personal leave of absence. Police Chief Randy Boehm

tried to contain the situation with careful language. At this point,

the leave is not related to any suspension or disciplinary action.

Having a personal relationship by itself is not necessarily caused

for disciplinary action. He would have had to have done

something to violate our rules or policies. The chief also

made it clear he wasn't requesting an outside agency to

investigate one of his own officers. He said, I have

complete confidence in my detectives. The fact that this was

another officer did not affect their treatment of the investigation,

and so the investigation pressed forward, with Stephen Rios officially

ruled out as a suspect. Detectives made another pal for information,

but instead yet of receiving calls from witnesses that night,

they received a call from someone else. Entirely It was

Stephen Rios. He told the dispatcher he was going to

kill himself with a shotgun. He said that he was

somewhere in the Kansas City area, ars away from Columbia.

For the next several hours, the department's crisis negotiation team

stayed on the phone with Raos, trying to talk and down.

Kansas City police in the FBI assisted Columbia officers in

tracking his location. At eleven thirty one pm, they traced

him back to the Columbia area and took him into

custody without incident. That phone call changed everything. Police Chief

Boem did a complete one ad on his previous stance.

Suddenly he was requesting assistance from the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Two Highway Patrol investigators were assigned to the case, specifically

to examine the parts of the investigation relating to Raos,

the exact angle the department had just publicly dismissed. The

chief explained, this is no way an indication of a

lack of faith in my officers. I have complete confidence

in them, but we've taken this step to assure the family,

friends and community that we're doing everything possible to solve

this crime. After Roos was located, he was assessed by

doctors a university hospital and placed under protective custody at

the Mid Missouri Health Center. The assumption was that he'd

remain there under watch while the investigation continued. He didn't.

Less than twenty four hours later, Stephen Rios escaped from

protective custody. He fled on foot, and when police caught

up with him, he was standing on a ledge of

the Maryland Avenue parking garage, five stories above the pavement.

His back to the drop, Rios said he was going

to jump. Negotiators from both the police Department and the

Columbia Fire Department rushed to the scene and began talking

to him. At one point, he else held up a

shade of paper, possibly a suicide note, then placed it

down on the ledge beside him. For an hour and

a half they talked. Finally, Rayol stepped on from the ledge.

Officers immediately swarmed him, grabbing him before he could change

his mind. He was taken back to the Mid Missouri

Health Center, this time presumably under tighter security. Chief Boem

addressed the press again, his tone noticeably different Judy's actions.

We are concerned and reevaluating his status in this investigation.

Then the chief admitted something else, something that should have

raised red flags from the very beginning. After Jesse's body

was discovered on June fifth, Stephen Rios had shown up

at the crime scene and offered his assistance. He helped

protect the scene, standing just feet from where Jesse's blood

had soaked into the grass. The chief acknowledged, I will

say we were an r reevaluating everything related to him.

While the investigation moved forward, Jesse's friends gathered to honor him.

They vowed to do things the Jesse Way, a phrase

that captured everything about who he'd been. They described a

young man who was caring, genteel, sophisticated, eccentric, passionate, and

larger than life. Jesse always laughed generous tips when he

ate out, I'm large like that, he used to joke

with a grin. Debor Davis, the mother of one of

Jesse's friends, remembered how he always called her miss Davis

when everyone else used her first name. It was a

small gesture, but it spoke to his character. Respectful, thoughtful,

raised right by his mother, Linda. Back in Kentucky, Ellen Depray,

another friend, said he loved youth and beauty. He would

adorn his apartment with white roses. A few days later,

Jesse was honored at Columbia's Gay Pride event. Nicki Nixon,

a board member of the Mid Missouri LGBT Coolition, said,

Jesse's in the back of all our minds. The community

that Jesse had lived openly in the community he had

written so passionately about defending, came together to mourn him.

While Jesse was being memorialized, Stephen Raeos resigned from the

Columbia Police Department. He was still being held in protective

custody at the hospital, but his lawyer delivered his handwritten resignation.

It didn't last any reasons for his departure. It didn't

need to. The investigation now focused squarely on Stephen Rios

as the lead suspect. Detectives had learned that he routinely

carried a clip on style folding knife, exactly the kind

of weapon that could have inflicted the wound to Jesse's throat.

They obtained a search warrant for his home and went

looking for evidence, especially that knife. They turned the house

upside down, searching every drawer, every closet, every possible hiding place.

They never found it, Rios agreed to sit down with

the detectives and submitted to an interview. He denied any

involvement in Jesse's murder. He admitted to the affair, but

claimed the last time they had any physical contact was

more than a week before the murder. He also agreed

to provide a DNA sample. Detectives already had DNA evidence

collected from Jesse's body, and now they could make a comparison.

Meal DNA had been found underneath Jesse's fingernails, genetic material

that likely came from him desperately scratching at his attacker.

During those final moments Jesse had fought back. He clawed

at whoever was killing him, and in doing so, he

preserved evidence that might identify his killer. The DNA samples

were sent to the lab for analysis. Technicians work to

extract viable profiles and run the comparison. When the results

came back, they were definitive. The DNA under Jesse's fingernails

was a match to Stephen Rios. That wasn't all. Rios's

hair was also discovered on Jesse's torso physical evidence placing

him in direct contact with Jesse's body on the first

of July two thousand and four, Stephen Rios was arrested

and charged with first degree murder an armed criminal action,

but instead of being taken to jail, he was moved

to the BIGS Forensic Center at Fulton State Hospital, a

psychiatric facility. When Rios appeared in corn on the twentieth

of August, Linda got to see her son's accused killer

in person for the first time. She driven eight hours

from Kentucky to Columbia alone to face the man she

believed had murdered her son. What she saw stunned her.

She said afterwards, I didn't expect him to look so

happy and relaxed, but I guess if I was in

a mental hospital instead of a jail, I'd be happy

and relaxed too. Linda praised Special Prosecutor Morley Swingle and

his staff for their support, but her words for the

Columbia Police Department were scathing. She said, I haven't received

any support from the police department. In fact, they've been

quite rude. She recounted how a detective had actually criticized

her for not immediately voicing her suspicion that Rios had

killed her son, But during her first meeting with investigators,

Linda had learned that Rios had worked at the crime

scene where Jesse's body was found. She said, I was speechless,

how could I talk? A few days later, Linda erected

a memorial cross at Jesse's former apartment. On the back,

she stabled the poem that Jesse had written, inspired by

a fortune cookie message that had read, you will be

crossing the great waters soon. In September, Raos appeared in

court again and pleaded not guilty to all of the

charges against him. His defense team requested a change of

venue and a new judge, both of which were granted. Eventually,

it was decided that the trial would remain in Boone County,

but a jury would be selected from Clay County to

insure fairness. Finally, in January of two thousand and five,

Rays was transferred from the psychiatric facility to the Boone

County jail to await trial. Linda's relief was palpable, as

she said, I'm glad they did it, and I think

it's about time. I told the prosecutor I didn't understand

why he was in a mental hospital. He deserved to

be in jail on the seventeenth of May two thousand

and five, nearly a year after Jesse was killed, the

trial began. Prosecutor Morley Swingle stood before the jury delivering

his opening statement. He said, this defendant used his badge

for sex and his knife to close the mouth of

the victim. Swingle then led the prosecution's theory. Rius had

abused his position as a police officer to initiate a

sexual relationship with Jesse. When Jesse began discovering the truth

that Rius was married with a newborn baby, he confronted him.

Jesse had asked Rius why the obstruction ticket from their

first encounter hadn't gone away. He told Rius to make

it go away or the police chief might hear some

very interesting information about their affair. But the police chief

never heard from Jesse because Swingle argued Rius had murdered

him to prevent the affair from being exposed. The prosecutor

then revealed something else. When Rius was first questioned about Jesse,

he had denied having an affair with him. In fact,

Rius had tried to deflect suspicion by suggesting that two

other Columbia police officers were having affairs with Jesse. Instead,

defense attorney Valerie Leftwick then stood and reminded the jury

of their narrow task. Your role is only to consider

evidence of a murder, not the affair between my client

and Jesse Valencia. She conceded the affair, there was no

denying it anymore with the DNA evidence, but focused on

the timeline. She said it happened six days since he

had sexual contact with Jesse Valencia. Yes, Stephen Rio's had

contact with Jesse Valencia. That's conceded. She told the jury

that Jesse had been intimate with many men before his murder,

and promised an expert witness who would testify that DNA

could remain on a body long after initial exposure. That

was the defense's entire strategy. The DNA under Jesse's fingernails

was old, residual, meaningless. Witnesses took the stand one by one,

painting a vivid picture of June fifth. Those who had

been at the scene where Jesse's body was found describe

what they'd seen. The prosecutor displayed a cross up photograph

of Jesse's face and neck wound. Linda began crying and

had to leave the courtroom. The courtroom heard testimony about

Jesse's personal hygiene habits. Jack Barry, Jesse's former boyfriend, identified

a manicure kid as belonging to Jesse. He said that

Jesse was meticulous about his cleanliness and he cared about

his appearance and grooming. The implication was clear. The defenses

claimed that DNA could remain under Jesse's carefully maintained fingernails

for six days was absurd. Jesse was in someone who

went days without washing his hands or cleaning under his nails.

The prosecution then turned to Raos's movements on the night

of the murder. He'd worked until three a m. Then

shared a few beers with other officers at the station.

Raos claimed he'd gone straight home after that. The prosecution

had a different theory He'd gone to Jesse's apartment. Later

that same day, after Jesse's body had been discovered, Rios

visited a police substation to review the dispatching system's computer,

monitoring which officers were on duty and where they were.

Then he approached two sergeants and volunteered that he could

identify the victim. Sergeant Kent Smith testified that he driven

Rus to the crime scene, where Rus was assigned to

security work standing guard over the very murder he had

allegedly committed just ours earlier. Officer James Means took the

stand and described Rus's demeanor that day. Something had been off,

deeply wrong. He testified, based on what I know of Steve,

there was something wrong. I said, Hey, how's it going,

and he didn't say a thing. I said what's wrong?

He said nothing, I'm just tired. That's basically the only

answer I got. Rius had been distant, unreachable, not himself.

Then police detective Jeff Westbrook testified about his conversation with

Rus after the suicide threat. Westbrook had looked Rieus in

the eyes and said the truth. Rios replied, if I'd

killed Jesse Valencia, I'd kill myself. This was after Rios

had already threatened to shoot himself, after he had been

talked to him by crisis negotiators and taken into custody.

Detective Westbrook pressed him again. I told him you almost

did kill yourself, and he said yeah, but I couldn't

go through with it. The implication hung in the air

of the courtroom. Rios had as good as admitted it.

If he'd killed Jesse, he'd kill himself. And he had

tried to kill himself twice. He just couldn't go through

with it. Another officer took the stand with testimony that

revealed just how obsessed Rius had become with Jesse Valencia

and how he had tried to manipulate the narrative from

the very beginning. Officer Brad Anderson had been present the

night that arrested Jesse back in April. About a month later,

Anderson responded to a noise complaint at Jesse's apartment. After

he got back into his patrol vehicle, his radio crackled

to life. It was Rio's calling him. Anderson testified. He

said he'd been listening to police radio traffic. He said,

I was overhearing on your radio that you were at

your boyfriend's house. I said boyfriend. I was confused. Then,

on June sixth, the day after Jesse's body was discovered,

Anderson was talking to a detective about recognizing Jesse's photo

when Rios walked past. Raos had turned to him with

a smirk and said, yeah, I see that your gay

lover's dead. Officer Anderson was one of the two officers

that Rios had accused of having an affair with Jesse

when detectives first confronted him about the relationship. There was

no evidence whatsoever that Anderson had any kind of relationship

with Jesse. Rios had simply thrown out names, trying to

deflect back suspicion, planting seeds of doubt. The prosecution then

turned the motive. Jesse's friends testified about conversations in his

final days. One friend recalled Jesse saying he had a

little secret he thought the Columbia Police Department might like

to know if the obstruction ticket didn't disappear. Another testified

that Jesse had told her he was going to end

the relationship if he found out that Rieus was married.

Jesse had been gathering leverage, preparing to expose Rius if

he had to, and Rios, according to the prosecution, had

decided to silence him permanently. Then the DNA evidence was

presented that the jury, in meticulous detail, the scientific testimony

was damning Rius's genetic material under Jesse's fingernails, his hair

on Jesse's torso physical proof of contact, violent contact. On

the night he died, the courtroom fell silent. Daveen Rios

himself took to the witness stand. He admitted to the affair.

There was no denying it anymore, but he insisted he

didn't kill Jesse. He claimed he left a rooftop party

at the police department at four forty five a m.

And went straight home, never stopped at Jesse's apartment, never

saw him that night. His wife, Libby, took to the

witness stand next. She testified that her husband had returned

home around five twenty or five twenty five a m.

While she was preparing a bottle for their infant son.

They had gone to bed at six a m. She said.

But then the prosecution addressed the knife, the weapon that

had never been found. A handful of people described Ryos

carrying a clip on style folding knife. Officer Roger Slewed

testified he had once asked to borrow Rios's knife sharpening stone.

Rios had told him it wouldn't work on his knife

because it was serrated. Four other officers testified a bit

seeing Raos wear and handle the knife. Libby Rios, on

the other hand, claimed she never saw it. She said

she never saw her husband carrying a knife, despite multiple

officers testifying otherwise. It was a telling detail the knife

had existed. Everyone knew it, and now it was conveniently gone.

Detective Tim Geiger testified next he had timed the distances

from the police station to Jesse's apartment, then from Jesse's

apartment to Ryos's home. The total trip, including short pauses,

came to less than twenty four minutes. Rios claimed he'd

gone straight at home, arriving at five twenty am, but

if he'd left the police station at four forty five

am and taken a twenty four minute detour to Jesse's

apartment first, he still would have arrived home right or

on five twenty am, exactly when his wife said he'd

walk through the door. Timeline fit perfectly. The prosecution rested.

Defense attorney Valerie Left, which called University of Kansas professor

Dean Stetler, a DNA expert, to the stand. While Stetler

didn't disagree with the crime lab's findings that DNA consistent

with Rios was found under Jesse's fingernails, he offered an

alternative explanation the DNA could have transferred from bed sheets

during a previous sexual encounter and remained under the nails

for any length of time. The hares found on Jesse's

torso could have transferred the same way. That was the

entire defense case. Prosecutor Morley Swingle stood before the jury

one final time. The hares gathered from Jesse's chest, he argued,

firmly placed Rios at the crime scene, not six days

earlier in a bed, but there on that grass in

the early morning hours of June fifth. He painted a

picture of the murder, Rios putting Jesse in a chokehold,

cutting off his air supply until he lost consciousness, then

sliding his throat while he was helpless. Defense attorney left,

which countered that neither the minuscule amount of Rios's DNA

under Jesse's fingernails, nor his hair on the body proved murder.

She said, what DNA tells you is that Stephen Rios

had contact with Jesse Valencia at some point in time.

The DNA doesn't tell you that Stephen Rios killed him.

The timeline didn't fit. She insisted her client couldn't have

killed Jesse and made it home when his wife said

he did. She even hinted that Rios was being made

a scapegoat, stopping just short of accusing detectives of framing

him Swingle's rebuttal was scorching. He called left which his

conspiracy hints absurd, and pointed out that if detectives were

desperate about anything, it was their wish to clear Rios

of the murder to save the department from further embarrassment.

He said he lied until he couldn't lie anymore, and

then he threatened suicide. These are not the apt actions

of an innocent man. The jury was sent to deliberate.

Nine hours later they returned. Stephen Rios was found guilty

of first degree murder and armed criminal action. Outside the courtroom,

Linda spoke to reporters and said, I hope every day

he's in prison he suffers. I never felt compassion for

him while I looked at him, because he had no

compassion for my son. On July fifth, two thousand and five,

Stephen Rios returned to court for sentencing. He stood in

an orange jumpsuit, shackled at the wrist and ankles, a

far cry from the police uniform he'd once worn. Given

the opportunity to speak, Ryos struggled to hope back tears.

He then said, I've lost the trust of the people

I love, especially those closest to me. He accused prosecutors

of distorting evidence and claimed his attorneys had been ineffective.

He then turned towards Linda and said, as much as

I love my son, I miss him and cherish him

every day. I want Missus Valencia to know that I

would not subject that to any one else. Linda would

later dismiss his words as theater a performance. She said,

We're going to have to think about this for the

rest of our lives. He still has his son. Judge

Ellen Roper sentenced Raus to life in prison without the

possibility of parole. She added a ten year sentence for

armed criminal action and ordered the sentences served consecutively, back

to back. It should have been over justice finally for

Jesse Valencia, but it wasn't. In April of two thousand

and seven, just two years after the conviction, Raus's sentence

was overturned by a three judge of pals panel. They

found that the trial court had aired in allowing the

admission of two hearsay statements that established possible motive testimony

from Jesse's friends about the ticket leverage and about ending

the relationship if Rios was married. The court ruld these

statements didn't mate accepted legal standards for hearsay evidence. Stephen

Rios was ordered to undergo a second trial. Linda's anguish

was palpable. She commented, We're just not getting our lives

back together. It's taken us this long to get settled down,

and me and the girls are still in counseling even

after all this time. Now they're telling us they're going

to give him a new trial. The retrial began in

December of two thousand and eight, more than four years

after Jesse's murder. The format was much the same as

the first trial. The prosecution's key evidence remained the DNA

and the HARE found on Jesse's body. The defense again

suggested it came from a previous sexual encounter. The same

witness is testified, but this time there was no hearsay evidence,

no testimony about comments Jesse had allegedly made the friends.

The case was stripped on to its physical evidence and timeline.

The jury deliberated for six hours before announcing they'd reached

a verdict. Stephen Rios was found guilty of second degree

murder and armed criminal action, not first degree, this time,

perhaps without the mode of evidence. Some jurors couldn't be

convinced of premeditation, but guilty. Nonetheless, during the sentencing phase,

Linda addressed the court one more time, speaking directly to

her son's killer, Stephen. You knew him, you knew what

he was like. Just being without Jesse is the most

devastating part, no matter how many times it goes to trial,

no matter what happens after today, Jesse's gone and we're

never going to get him back. This time, Rius was

sentenced to life in prison plus twenty three years for

armed criminal action, but there was one crucial difference from

his original sentence. Unlike the first time Stephen, Rius could

eventually be eligible for parole. Well that is it for

this episode of Morbidology. As always, thank you so much

for listening, and i'd like to say a massive thank

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