# The Dog Knew: He Was Already Inside

An episode of [Skinwalker: Horror Stories](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6785756522), 27 Jul 2026, 26 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72735386/0039.mp3

The Dog Knew: He Was Already Inside A man returns home after a long drive to find his dog cowering and his garage door acting strangely. Within an hour, he is dead, with no sign of forced entry or theft. What chilling detail did the neighbor's camera capture just minutes before he arrived? In this episode, we delve into the unsettling case of Don Fluitt, a man who rebuilt his life only to be murdered the night he returned home to Albuquerque. We explore the meticulous crime scene, the unexpected DNA evidence, and the hidden tensions within his family, all leading to a shocking revelation about who was waiting for him. Person: Don Fluitt Date: December 28, 2016 Location: Albuquerque Evidence: DNA under fingernails Detective: Matthew Kaplan - Don Fluitt was 54 years old and had rebuilt his life after losing his job as a firefighter. - He and his 11-year-old daughter, Sienna, ran "Spaghetti Sunday" for people experiencing homelessness. - A neighbor's camera recorded a figure in a dark hooded jacket entering Don's garage at 7:41 PM. - Don arrived home at 7:45 PM, four minutes after the figure was seen entering his garage. - His dog, Buddy, was found trembling in the bedroom, a behavior never seen before. To listen ad-free and access premium episodes, start your 30-day free trial at obomedia.com. OBOMEDIA presents real horror stories a scary story podcast for the late night hours. Every episode is horror narration done right: true scary stories and horror stories based on true events, told from the first chilling minute. Expect disturbing true stories, disturbing horror stories and dark true horror stories drawn from real testimonies. Some nights bring camping horror stories, forest horror stories and road horror stories; others bring home alone horror stories, haunted stories, eerie stories, strange stories and unsettling tales true creepy stories and creepy encounters that never made the news. Press play on our late night horror stories and late night scary stories, from storytime horror to a full horror stories compilation or scary stories compilation real scary stories, scary stories based on true events, and dark stories to keep the lights on. © 2026 Created with OBOMEDIA technology. All rights reserved. This episode and its content (audio, text and related materials) are the property of their respective creator and are distributed under the OBOMEDIA name on platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Pocket Casts. Reproduction, distribution, editing or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission is prohibited. For permissions, licensing and business inquiries: business@obomedia

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: Something was already wrong before Don flewt pulled into his driveway,
[0:07] Speaker 1: he just didn't know it yet. On the night of
[0:10] Speaker 1: December twenty eighth, twenty sixteen, Don returned home to Albuquerque
[0:16] Speaker 1: after a twelve hour drive from California. He'd been visiting
[0:20] Speaker 1: his mother. He was tired, probably a little road worn,
[0:25] Speaker 1: and looking forward to a quiet night. What he found
[0:29] Speaker 1: instead was his dog cowering in the bedroom, a dog
[0:32] Speaker 1: that had never done that before, and a garage door
[0:36] Speaker 1: that behaved in a way Don decided to ignore. He
[0:40] Speaker 1: was dead within the hour. There was no forced entry,
[0:44] Speaker 1: nothing was stolen. Whoever waited inside that house knew exactly
[0:49] Speaker 1: when Dawn would be home and was patient enough to
[0:54] Speaker 1: wait in the dark for him. There is something about
[0:57] Speaker 1: this case that I couldn't let go of after the
[0:59] Speaker 1: first time I read through it. A man who had
[1:02] Speaker 1: rebuilt his entire life after losing everything killed the same
[1:06] Speaker 1: night he came home to show his daughter her Christmas present.
[1:09] Speaker 1: That detail doesn't leave you. The results came back in
[1:13] Speaker 1: March of twenty seventeen, three months after the murder. DNA
[1:19] Speaker 1: collected from beneath Don Flewett's finger nails matched a single
[1:22] Speaker 1: individual not a stranger, not a random act of violence,
[1:27] Speaker 1: Someone who had been inside that house close enough to fight,
[1:30] Speaker 1: close enough to be scratched. Someone who then cleaned the
[1:34] Speaker 1: blood from the floor, folded the chloro soaked towels into
[1:38] Speaker 1: the washing machine drum, and walked out as if nothing
[1:41] Speaker 1: had happened. Detective Matthew Caplan of the Albuquerque Police Department
[1:46] Speaker 1: had suspected this from the beginning. The scene was too clean,
[1:50] Speaker 1: and a scene that clean tells you something important. Whoever
[1:54] Speaker 1: did this wasn't panicking. They came prepared. Dawn flew It
[1:58] Speaker 1: was fifty four years old, and his life was not
[2:01] Speaker 1: a simple one. Years earlier, he had lost his job
[2:06] Speaker 1: as a fire fighter after testing positive for drugs. That
[2:10] Speaker 1: kind of fall from someone who runs into burning buildings
[2:13] Speaker 1: for a living to someone who loses it all would
[2:18] Speaker 1: break most people permanently. Dawn rebuilt. He found work supporting
[2:23] Speaker 1: people with disabilities, a job that required patience and genuine care.
[2:29] Speaker 1: He became a practicing believer, and somewhere along the way,
[2:33] Speaker 1: he and his eleven year old daughter Sienna, started something
[2:36] Speaker 1: called Spaghetti Sunday, a community gathering where they cooked and
[2:40] Speaker 1: served pasta to people living on the streets of Albuquerque.
[2:44] Speaker 1: Not a charity, a ritual, something they did together, father
[2:49] Speaker 1: and daughter every week. He had been through enough to
[2:53] Speaker 1: understand what it meant to need someone to show up,
[2:57] Speaker 1: so he showed up every week. The town house Dawn
[3:02] Speaker 1: rented sad on a quiet residential street in Albuquerque. Two floors,
[3:08] Speaker 1: stucco exterior, two garage bays, Christmas lights still strung along
[3:13] Speaker 1: the front. The kind of house that looks completely ordinary
[3:16] Speaker 1: from the outside, a kind of street where nothing ever happens.
[3:21] Speaker 1: His landlord was a man named Benny Ruiz, who owned
[3:24] Speaker 1: the property. Don had a dog, a mixed breed named Buddy, who,
[3:28] Speaker 1: by all accounts was social and easygoing. Don's ex wife,
[3:32] Speaker 1: Christine White, lived across town with her husband, Terry White,
[3:36] Speaker 1: a long haul trucker. Don and Christine had shared custody
[3:40] Speaker 1: of Siena after their marriage ended. The relationship between them
[3:45] Speaker 1: was described as civil functional. The relationship between Don and
[3:49] Speaker 1: Terry was described differently uncomfortable, strained in the way that
[3:55] Speaker 1: only comes when a man is raising someone else's child,
[3:59] Speaker 1: and that arrangement creates pressure no one talks about openly.
[4:05] Speaker 1: On December twenty eighth, Don and Sienna made the twelve
[4:08] Speaker 1: hour drive back from California together. Sienna slept most of
[4:12] Speaker 1: the way in the passenger seat. When they arrived at
[4:15] Speaker 1: the house, Don let her see the bicycle waiting under
[4:18] Speaker 1: the Christmas tree before telling her they couldn't stay. She
[4:23] Speaker 1: needed to go back to Christine's for the night. Sienna
[4:26] Speaker 1: was eleven, She understood, but barely. At around seven forty
[4:30] Speaker 1: five in the evening, Don dropped Sienna off at Christine's house.
[4:35] Speaker 1: They exchanged a few words at the door, polite brief
[4:41] Speaker 1: then Don drove back home alone. What no one knew
[4:44] Speaker 1: at that moment, not Don, not Christine, not Sienna sleeping
[4:49] Speaker 1: at her mother's that night, was that the camera on
[4:52] Speaker 1: a neighbor's house had already recorded something. See At seven
[4:57] Speaker 1: forty one in the evening, four minutes before before Don
[5:00] Speaker 1: even arrived at Christine's door, a figure in a dark
[5:04] Speaker 1: hooded jacket appeared on the footage. The figure walked up
[5:07] Speaker 1: Don's driveway, knocked over the garbage bin near the curve,
[5:10] Speaker 1: and disappeared into the shadow of the garage. Then the
[5:14] Speaker 1: footage recorded nothing, just a quiet street with Christmas lights
[5:19] Speaker 1: and a garage door that was closed. Dawn arrived home
[5:23] Speaker 1: minutes later, he lifted the overturned garbage bin he would
[5:27] Speaker 1: have noticed it it was right there in the driveway,
[5:30] Speaker 1: and went inside, and somewhere in those first few minutes
[5:34] Speaker 1: back he noticed two things. His dog Buddy was not
[5:39] Speaker 1: at the door to greet him, but he was in
[5:41] Speaker 1: the bedroom, pressed against the far wall, trembling. Don also
[5:46] Speaker 1: noticed that the garage door had started to come down,
[5:49] Speaker 1: then reversed, then closed again. He decided there was a
[5:53] Speaker 1: mechanical explanation. There wasn't. The morning of December twenty ninth
[5:58] Speaker 1: began with a phone call that shouldn't have been necessary.
[6:02] Speaker 1: Siena flew it eleven years old, woke up and waited.
[6:07] Speaker 1: Her father always called before she went to sleep. He
[6:10] Speaker 1: had done it every night they were apart, without exception.
[6:14] Speaker 1: That night, the call never came, so in the morning
[6:18] Speaker 1: she called his office herself. The phone rang through to
[6:21] Speaker 1: Valerie Torres, a co worker, who listened to the child's
[6:25] Speaker 1: voice and felt something shift in her chest. She tried Donsell,
[6:30] Speaker 1: no answer. She tried the landline. Nothing. She drove to
[6:35] Speaker 1: the townhouse with a colleague, and when they arrived, the
[6:38] Speaker 1: front door was standing open. That detail stopped her at
[6:42] Speaker 1: the threshold the front door of a man who had
[6:45] Speaker 1: just returned from a twelve hour drive in December, in
[6:49] Speaker 1: the middle of a quiet residential street. Open, not broken,
[6:53] Speaker 1: not forced, just open. She walked in. She found Don
[6:58] Speaker 1: Flutt's body in the garage behind the suv, face up
[7:02] Speaker 1: against the rear wall. There was a dark stain on
[7:05] Speaker 1: the wall beside him. Valerie called nine one one, and
[7:09] Speaker 1: with an hour's Detective Matthew Caplan of the Albuquerque Police
[7:12] Speaker 1: Department was standing in that garage trying to read what
[7:16] Speaker 1: the room was telling him. The room was telling him
[7:19] Speaker 1: very little. That was the first problem. There were no
[7:23] Speaker 1: signs of forced entry anywhere in the house. No broken locks,
[7:28] Speaker 1: no shattered glass, no pride door frames. Nothing had been stolen,
[7:35] Speaker 1: no drawers pulled open, no electronics missing, no wallet taken.
[7:40] Speaker 1: Whatever happened in that garage was not a robbery. The motive,
[7:45] Speaker 1: if there was one, was personal, but the scene had
[7:48] Speaker 1: been scrubbed. An empty bleach bottle sat on top of
[7:52] Speaker 1: the washing machine inside the drum, damp towels that smelled
[7:56] Speaker 1: of chlorine. When Kaplan ran luminol across the kitchen floor
[8:01] Speaker 1: and the sink basin. Blood traces lit up where none
[8:04] Speaker 1: should have been. Whoever killed Don Fleut had walked through
[8:08] Speaker 1: this house after moving through rooms cleaning thinking. The body
[8:14] Speaker 1: told its own story, and the story was brutal. A
[8:17] Speaker 1: deep cut across the throat side to side, smaller cuts
[8:21] Speaker 1: near the eye, the ear, the hand wounds consistent with
[8:26] Speaker 1: someone fighting back, catching a blade on skin while trying
[8:29] Speaker 1: to stop it. Blunt force trauma as well from something
[8:33] Speaker 1: the medical examiner described as consistent with a tire thumper
[8:37] Speaker 1: or a small wooden bat and burst capillaries in the
[8:40] Speaker 1: eyes and eyelids. That detail is specific. It means pressure
[8:45] Speaker 1: was applied to the throat with enough sustained force to
[8:48] Speaker 1: rupture the tiny vessels under the skin. Don flew It
[8:51] Speaker 1: did not go quickly. He scratched at whoever was on
[8:55] Speaker 1: top of him. That mattered more than anyone realized at
[8:58] Speaker 1: the time. One's first question was the obvious one who
[9:02] Speaker 1: had access. No forced entry meant the killer either had
[9:06] Speaker 1: a key, knew the layout well enough to enter through
[9:09] Speaker 1: an unlocked point, or was let in. The landlord Benny
[9:14] Speaker 1: Ruiz had a key. The ex wife Christine White may
[9:18] Speaker 1: have had one from the time she and Dawn shared
[9:21] Speaker 1: the property. Christine's husband, Terry White, was a frequent presence
[9:26] Speaker 1: in Sienna's life and would have known the household routine.
[9:29] Speaker 1: And then there was Denis Fluitt, Don's estranged younger brother,
[9:33] Speaker 1: whose relationship with Dawn had collapsed into silence after their
[9:37] Speaker 1: father's death the previous year. Each of these names entered
[9:40] Speaker 1: the investigation carrying weight. Dennis Fleut went first, in the
[9:44] Speaker 1: way that people who behaved strangely at crime scenes always
[9:48] Speaker 1: go first. He had shown up at the town house
[9:50] Speaker 1: while the investigation was still active, which was odd. He
[9:54] Speaker 1: had tried to arrange access to another of Benny's properties
[9:57] Speaker 1: to store Dawn's belongings, and Benny had declined, citing Denis's
[10:03] Speaker 1: criminal record for assault and disorderly conduct. His alibi for
[10:07] Speaker 1: the night of December twenty eighth was that he had
[10:09] Speaker 1: been home alone. No one to confirm it, no phone
[10:13] Speaker 1: records placing him elsewhere, just his word and silence that
[10:16] Speaker 1: felt louder than it should have. But Caplin found nothing
[10:20] Speaker 1: that connected Denis to the physical evidence. No Deillee, no
[10:25] Speaker 1: forensic trace, no witness who placed him near the house
[10:28] Speaker 1: that night. Suspicion is not evidence, and the investigation moved.
[10:34] Speaker 1: Benny Ruess attracted attention for different reasons. He had arrived
[10:39] Speaker 1: at the scene on December twenty ninth, crossed the police
[10:42] Speaker 1: tape and appeared visibly agitated, a behavior that reads differently
[10:47] Speaker 1: depending on what you are looking for. He had suggested,
[10:50] Speaker 1: without any supporting evidence, that a homeless person might be responsible,
[10:56] Speaker 1: but a homeless person might be responsible. Then days later,
[11:02] Speaker 1: Dennis discovered Benny already inside the town house. Benny explained
[11:07] Speaker 1: he was feeding Buddy, the dog. That explanation was accepted.
[11:13] Speaker 1: Benny had no criminal record, and like Denis, he left
[11:18] Speaker 1: no forensic trace at the scene. The homeless theory went nowhere.
[11:23] Speaker 1: There was no evidence. It was the kind of suggestion
[11:26] Speaker 1: that sounds like something when there is nothing else, and
[11:29] Speaker 1: Caplin treated it accordingly. That left the video. A neighbor
[11:34] Speaker 1: had installed a security camera that pointed toward the street.
[11:38] Speaker 1: On December thirtieth, she reviewed the footage and called Caplin.
[11:43] Speaker 1: What the camera had captured On the night of December
[11:45] Speaker 1: twenty eighth was this. At seven forty one in the evening,
[11:49] Speaker 1: a hooded figure appeared at the base of Don's driveway.
[11:52] Speaker 1: The figure tipped over the garbage bin. Then it moved
[11:56] Speaker 1: up the driveway toward the garage and disappeared from the frame.
[12:01] Speaker 1: Approximately fifteen minutes later, Dawn flew it arrived, he picked
[12:06] Speaker 1: up the bin, he went inside. Then the camera recorded
[12:10] Speaker 1: something else. The garage light dimmed, the door was closing,
[12:14] Speaker 1: Then the light grew again. The door had reversed. There
[12:18] Speaker 1: were brief flashes, then darkness. Caplin went back to the
[12:22] Speaker 1: garage to understand what those flashes meant. He walked through
[12:26] Speaker 1: the mechanism himself. When some one crosses underneath a descending
[12:30] Speaker 1: garage door, the censer detects the interruption and triggers three
[12:33] Speaker 1: brief flashes of light before reversing the door upward. Three flashes,
[12:39] Speaker 1: then the door rises. Then, if the mechanism is operated
[12:43] Speaker 1: again from inside, it descends and closes, which meant the
[12:48] Speaker 1: hooded figure had not left before Dawn arrived. It had
[12:52] Speaker 1: gone into the garage first. Dawn came home, walked in,
[12:56] Speaker 1: and the door closed behind him. With both of them inside,
[13:00] Speaker 1: the light dimmed, flashed three times, rose, and then went
[13:05] Speaker 1: dark for the last time. There is a moment in
[13:08] Speaker 1: this investigation that Caplan has likely turned over many times
[13:11] Speaker 1: since Dan flu had heard that garage door, stop and reverse.
[13:16] Speaker 1: He registered it the Bible notes, He acknowledged it, decided
[13:20] Speaker 1: it was nothing, and went back to unpacking a long
[13:23] Speaker 1: drive December cold, a man who wanted to be home.
[13:29] Speaker 1: The rational explanation was a censer glitch, a gust of wind,
[13:33] Speaker 1: the kind of minor mechanical hiccough that happens in houses
[13:37] Speaker 1: and means nothing. He chose the rational exclamation. He was wrong,
[13:43] Speaker 1: and it cost him everything. What the video confirms is
[13:47] Speaker 1: a time line with no comfortable gaps. The hooded figure
[13:51] Speaker 1: entered the garage at approximately seven forty one. Dawn dropped
[13:56] Speaker 1: Siena at Christine's house and turned around. He arrived back
[14:01] Speaker 1: at the townhouse around seven fifty five. That leaves roughly
[14:04] Speaker 1: fourteen minutes, fourteen minutes during which someone stood inside that
[14:08] Speaker 1: garage in the dark, waiting while Don was two miles
[14:12] Speaker 1: away saying good night to his daughter. The garbage bin
[14:16] Speaker 1: had been tipped over deliberately. That is not the behavior
[14:20] Speaker 1: of someone passing through. Tipping the bin was a trigger,
[14:25] Speaker 1: a way to make Don stop outside before entering, to
[14:28] Speaker 1: create a predictable sequence of movements. Dawn stopped, He righted
[14:34] Speaker 1: the bin. He went inside. The sequence worked exactly as designed.
[14:39] Speaker 1: Something else. Buddy the dog had been hiding in the
[14:44] Speaker 1: upstairs bedroom when Dawn arrived hours before he was killed,
[14:49] Speaker 1: not asleep, not simply settled, hiding pressed into a corner
[14:54] Speaker 1: of the room, in a state of distress that Don
[14:56] Speaker 1: noticed immediately, A dog that frightened in its own home
[15:00] Speaker 1: before anything visible had happened, before Dawn saw any sign
[15:05] Speaker 1: of intrusion, before the door anomaly, before anything. Caplin noted
[15:10] Speaker 1: that Buddy was not useful in identifying a suspect, but
[15:14] Speaker 1: Buddy's behavior tells a different part of the story. Someone
[15:18] Speaker 1: had been in that house before Dawn returned, not necessarily
[15:22] Speaker 1: the garage, possibly elsewhere, long enough that the dog knew
[15:26] Speaker 1: something was wrong, and when as far from it as
[15:29] Speaker 1: it could go. The scrubbing of the scene compounds this
[15:33] Speaker 1: blood in the kitchen, blood in the sink. That is
[15:38] Speaker 1: not where Don Fleut's body was found. His body was
[15:41] Speaker 1: in the garage. The blood in the kitchen means there
[15:44] Speaker 1: was movement after the attack through the house, across rooms
[15:49] Speaker 1: into the kitchen. Someone used the sink, Someone gathered the towels,
[15:55] Speaker 1: soaked them in bleach, loaded them into the washing machine.
[15:58] Speaker 1: Drum that takes time, that takes a degree of composure
[16:03] Speaker 1: that is difficult to imagine standing over what had just
[16:06] Speaker 1: happened in that garage. The hands that cleaned that kitchen
[16:10] Speaker 1: belonged to someone who had planned beyond the killing itself.
[16:13] Speaker 1: Caplin pulled everyone in and listened. Terry White came in calmly.
[16:18] Speaker 1: He described his relationship with Dawn as uncomfortable, but not hostile.
[16:23] Speaker 1: He had an alibi. He had been at his sister's
[16:25] Speaker 1: house until nine in the evening, then stopped at a Wendy's,
[16:30] Speaker 1: then rested in his truck cab before his overnight shift.
[16:33] Speaker 1: His sister confirmed it, his employer confirmed his shift on paper.
[16:38] Speaker 1: Terry White was elsewhere. When Don Fluick died. Two people
[16:42] Speaker 1: confirmed the alibi. Two people said the same thing. The
[16:45] Speaker 1: rational explanation held until March of twenty seventeen, when the
[16:50] Speaker 1: laboratory results came back from the DNA taken from beneath
[16:54] Speaker 1: Don Flewitt's finger nails down had scratched his killing. He
[16:59] Speaker 1: had caught skin or tissue or something biological under his
[17:03] Speaker 1: nails while he fought. The lab processed the sample against
[17:07] Speaker 1: known profiles. The match was confirmed. The name attached to
[17:11] Speaker 1: that DNA was Terry White, Christine's husband, the man who
[17:15] Speaker 1: had sat across from Caplin and described his relationship with
[17:19] Speaker 1: Dawn as uncomfortable but not bad. The man whose alibi
[17:24] Speaker 1: had been verified by two separate people. The alibi was
[17:28] Speaker 1: a lie. The sister had lied, The employer's confirmation had gaps.
[17:34] Speaker 1: When investigators pressed further, the time line collapsed. Terry White
[17:39] Speaker 1: had not been at his sister's house until nine. He
[17:43] Speaker 1: had not followed the sequence he described. The alibi that
[17:46] Speaker 1: had seemed solid was constructed, and what lay underneath it
[17:51] Speaker 1: was a man who had been in that garage. The
[17:54] Speaker 1: question that follows a conviction is rarely about guilt. The
[17:57] Speaker 1: evidence answered that the DNA played to Terry White in
[18:01] Speaker 1: physical contact with Don Flewet at a level consistent with
[18:04] Speaker 1: a violent struggle. The video placed a hooded figure at
[18:07] Speaker 1: the property before Dawn arrived. The clean scene pointed to premeditation.
[18:12] Speaker 1: The false alibi confirmed concealment. Terry White was arrested on
[18:17] Speaker 1: April third, two thousand seventeen, and in August of two
[18:23] Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, a jury convicted him of first degree murder,
[18:27] Speaker 1: aggravated robbery, and tampering with evidence. The sentence was life
[18:32] Speaker 1: in prison plus twelve additional years. But a conviction does
[18:35] Speaker 1: not close every question. Sometimes it opens new ones. Terry White,
[18:40] Speaker 1: after his conviction, made a claim. He stated that Christina
[18:44] Speaker 1: had pushed him toward this, that she had wanted Dawn
[18:48] Speaker 1: out of the picture so that she could gain full
[18:50] Speaker 1: custody of Siena. He named his own wife as the
[18:54] Speaker 1: person who had motivated the killing. Investigators took this seriously
[18:58] Speaker 1: enough to act on it. Christine White was arrested and
[19:01] Speaker 1: charged with murder. Then, after review, the charges were dropped.
[19:06] Speaker 1: The evidence was not there. Christine had a verified alibi.
[19:11] Speaker 1: She was with Siena from seven forty five onward, exactly
[19:15] Speaker 1: when the hooded figure was already at Don's driveway. There
[19:19] Speaker 1: was no forensic connection between Christine and the crime. What
[19:23] Speaker 1: Terry said about Christine may have been true, or it
[19:26] Speaker 1: may have been a man in prison trying to shift
[19:28] Speaker 1: weight on to some one else. The investigation could not
[19:32] Speaker 1: determine which. That ambiguity is not going to resolve itself.
[19:36] Speaker 1: What the evidence does confirm is a pattern of behavior
[19:39] Speaker 1: that preceded the killing by months. The custody dispute between
[19:43] Speaker 1: Don and Christine had been contentious. Don had fought for
[19:48] Speaker 1: more time with Siena. The financial and emotional stakes of
[19:53] Speaker 1: that dispute were real, and they touched every adult in
[19:57] Speaker 1: that household, including Terry White, whose life was structured around Christine's.
[20:04] Speaker 1: Whether Christine spoke words that Terry interpreted as permission, or
[20:07] Speaker 1: whether Terry acted on a private calculation she knew nothing about,
[20:12] Speaker 1: the legal system arrived at the same answer. Terry is responsible,
[20:18] Speaker 1: Christine is not charged, and the space between those two
[20:21] Speaker 1: facts is where the story refuses to end. Siena Flewitt
[20:25] Speaker 1: was eleven years old when her father did not call
[20:28] Speaker 1: her before she went to sleep. She is the person
[20:31] Speaker 1: at the center of a custody dispute that may have
[20:34] Speaker 1: ended her father's life. The thing Dawn and Christine had
[20:38] Speaker 1: been fighting over more time with Siena less time apart
[20:42] Speaker 1: became the territory on which he was killed. Every Sunday
[20:46] Speaker 1: that Dawn organized the spaghetti Sunday meals with his daughter,
[20:50] Speaker 1: every hour he longed driving her somewhere and back, every
[20:56] Speaker 1: phone call he made before she went to sleep, all
[20:59] Speaker 1: of it was evidence of what he was trying to
[21:01] Speaker 1: protect and the person who ended that was a man
[21:05] Speaker 1: who had been sitting at the same dinner table in
[21:08] Speaker 1: the same house present in Siena's daily life. The door
[21:11] Speaker 1: he walked through that December night had no signs of
[21:14] Speaker 1: forced entry. It never did. This was never a stranger's crime.
[21:21] Speaker 1: Terry White was arrested on April third, two thousand seventeen,
[21:25] Speaker 1: three months after Dawn flew It died on the floor
[21:28] Speaker 1: of his own garage. The arrest came quietly, without dramatic confrontation.
[21:34] Speaker 1: A man who had sat across from detectives and described
[21:38] Speaker 1: his relationship with Dawn as uncomfortable but not bad, was
[21:43] Speaker 1: taken into custody, and the calm he had performed so
[21:45] Speaker 1: convincingly finally had a name attached to it. The trial
[21:49] Speaker 1: moved through the summer of two thousand eighteen. In August,
[21:54] Speaker 1: a jury convicted Terry of first degree murder, aggravated robbery,
[21:58] Speaker 1: and tampering with evidence. The sentence was life in prison
[22:02] Speaker 1: plus twelve additional years. The tampering charge carried its own weight.
[22:07] Speaker 1: Some one had scrubbed that garage floor. Some one had
[22:10] Speaker 1: filled a washer drum with bleach silked towels and walked
[22:13] Speaker 1: back through the kitchen leaving traces that Luminol would find
[22:17] Speaker 1: months later that some one was now going to die
[22:20] Speaker 1: behind bars. There is a detail from the conviction that
[22:24] Speaker 1: lingers in a specific way. The charge was aggravated robbery,
[22:28] Speaker 1: but nothing was taken from the house, no drawers open,
[22:32] Speaker 1: no objects scattered. Investigators determined that the confrontation itself, the
[22:38] Speaker 1: physical act of taking Don's life, constituted the robbery. What
[22:43] Speaker 1: was stolen was dawn, his presence, his Sunday evenings with
[22:47] Speaker 1: pots of spaghetti, and people who had nowhere else to go.
[22:51] Speaker 1: Terry claimed during proceedings that Christine had pushed him toward
[22:54] Speaker 1: the killing, that the goal was custody of Siena. Christine
[22:58] Speaker 1: White was arrested, the charges were dropped. No forensic evidence
[23:03] Speaker 1: connected her to the crime, and her alibi home with
[23:06] Speaker 1: Siena from seven forty five onward held without contradiction. Whether
[23:11] Speaker 1: Terry genuinely believed what he said or whether it was
[23:15] Speaker 1: one last attempt to redirect the story is a question
[23:19] Speaker 1: the court could not answer with evidence. Siena was eleven
[23:23] Speaker 1: years old when she called her father's office the morning
[23:25] Speaker 1: of December twenty ninth, because he hadn't called her the
[23:29] Speaker 1: night before. He always called. That was the ritual, not
[23:35] Speaker 1: a grand gesture, just a voice before sleep. It didn't
[23:40] Speaker 1: derive she made the call that started everything. There is
[23:46] Speaker 1: something that doesn't sit easily even after the verdict. When
[23:50] Speaker 1: I read through the sequence of that night, I keep
[23:52] Speaker 1: returning to the same moment, Dawn lifting the tipped garbage
[23:56] Speaker 1: can off the sidewalk before he walked inside. He didn't know.
[24:01] Speaker 1: He thought it was wind. The hooded figure on the
[24:04] Speaker 1: neighbor's security footage arrived at seven forty one in the evening.
[24:09] Speaker 1: Don arrived at seven fifty five. Fourteen minutes in that window,
[24:14] Speaker 1: someone moved through Don's home, found a position and waited.
[24:19] Speaker 1: The garage door censor tripped when Don entered. It descended,
[24:23] Speaker 1: detected resistance, reversed with three brief flashes, then closed again.
[24:29] Speaker 1: Don noticed it. He decided it was a malfunction. He
[24:32] Speaker 1: was wrong about that, and there was no version of
[24:35] Speaker 1: the next few minutes where that mistake could be undone.
[24:38] Speaker 1: Don Flewid had rebuilt his life from a point most
[24:41] Speaker 1: people don't recover from. He had turned the wreckage of
[24:45] Speaker 1: his years as a fire fighter into something his daughter
[24:48] Speaker 1: could stand beside. Tables full of strangers eating on Sunday evenings.
[24:53] Speaker 1: Bulls passed hand to hand on a street corner in Albuquerque.
[24:58] Speaker 1: He was fifty four years old. He had just driven
[25:01] Speaker 1: twelve hours to see his mother. He stopped to let
[25:04] Speaker 1: Siena look at her new bicycle under the Christmas tree
[25:06] Speaker 1: before taking her to Christine's house because he knew she'd
[25:10] Speaker 1: want to see it. That was the last thing he
[25:12] Speaker 1: gave her before he walked back into his own house alone.
[25:16] Speaker 1: Spaghetti Sunday still happens in Albuquerque. The people who show
[25:21] Speaker 1: up know whose idea it was. Terry White is serving
[25:24] Speaker 1: Life plus twelve years. Don's daughter is growing up in
[25:28] Speaker 1: a world where her father called every night before she
[25:31] Speaker 1: went to sleep, until one night he didn't, and she
[25:35] Speaker 1: had to be the one to find out why that
[25:38] Speaker 1: call she made, that one call she made that one
[25:44] Speaker 1: call it found him. This show is made by Obo
[25:50] Speaker 1: Media

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