BBC SDS.

Hey, it's Maggie.

Just a quick heads up before we begin.

This episode does contain some pretty detailed descriptions of violence and deals with adult themes.

Tell me a little bit about Houston.

I've never been there.

What's it like.

Liston is the most diverse town in the state of Texas, very very ethnic friendly, lots of culture, lots of restaurants.

It might not sound like it, but I've been desperate to talk to this guy ever since I started working on this story.

It's a nice little part of Southeast Texas that nobody considers to be Texas.

He has a unique insight.

We like to go out and test different restaurants.

Sometimes we have Thai food and sometimes you know the stake how is to serve excellent food.

And his opinion really counts.

There's plenty of tex Mex and there's even variations of tex Mex.

So you can go in one restaurant, I have a text Mex and then something next week will be a little bit different.

I think they have the most cultural influence, but although the country is getting more and more culturally influenced by Hispanic America, so that's always good.

Totally, I'm with you.

It has taken me hours and hours of searching online and dozens of phone calls to find Air and Day.

Tell me why we are talking to you today.

You want to know my take on the Sandra Melgar murder trail.

Do you still think about the case?

Oh?

Yeah, will never leave.

Me, Arin Day.

He was one of the jurors in the state of Texas versus Sandra Gene Melgar.

It's part of my life, part of my history.

I got called into something I didn't want, but I was asked to do it.

I did it because that's of my civil responsibility.

Starting at the beginning, I'd love to talk a little bit about the jury selection process.

Yeah.

In the Boorda for dire.

Which again I'm sure Aaron and I are pronouncing one hundred percent correctly, is when perspective jurors are assessed on whether they can be truly impartial or not.

I remember this as far as the prosecutor's first words.

She said, welcome, ladies and gentlemen to Ordai.

I have one question I want you to think about.

Can you convict a person of murder with no motive?

I answer that question, yeah, I think you know.

If there's evidence, we should be able to convict.

If we can't and the evidence isn't prevalent enough, then we won't convict us.

What our legal system is all about?

And what did you think of that question?

When she asked, uh, you know it was really unusual that well, I knew it would be an unusual trial.

A woman found tied up and trapped in a closet, her hands tied, the door jammed shut from the outside, on trial for stabbing her husband to death without a motive.

I'm Maggie Robinson Katz and from BBC's Studios and iHeart podcasts.

This is Hands Tied, episode six the trial.

When Santa Malgar walked into the courtroom, she was walking with a cane and I was struck by how petite she is and her delicate features.

That's Amanda Orr, a journalist covering the case for Reuters.

She had a shock of whitish gray hair that was about shoulder length.

She was wearing glasses, and she didn't seem like a big, hulking woman that would have been physically capable of overcoming a grown man.

Amanda joins her fellow spectators, the media, law students and your casual gawkers all cramped onto the uncomfortable wooden benches waiting for the show to start.

Murder trials are some of the greatest dramas any human can witness.

It's really a fascinating thing to behold.

The greatest lawyers know that winning a jury over is about presenting the facts in a way that engages them, and so attorneys are tasked with the job of being storytellers.

Whoever tells the best story wins.

One of those storytellers is the silver haired defense attorney Max Seacrest.

He's also joined by his niece and protege, Allison Seacrest.

Max dressed in a dark zomber suit and wears round towardous shell glasses, while Alison sports an understated linen suit pearls her long hair pulled back.

Telling another story is prosecutor Colleen Barnett, a confident woman with a shoulder length blonde bob and a sharp suit.

We tried to get Colleen for this podcast, but we didn't get a response.

So what comes next are her words taken from the court transcript, spoken by an actor.

You're going to hear testimony that Heimi's brother knocked on the front door and didn't get an answer.

This is Colleen's opening statement.

You're going to hear testimony that when he went into the house, he found his brother's body in his brother's closet, brutally stabbed to death, multiple stab wounds on his chest and his neck.

He went into another part of the house where he found Sandramelgar in her closet with her hands tied behind her back and her ankles wrapped.

She was in her closet in the bathroom, and there was a chair on the outside of the bathroom door, wedged up against the door.

The police were called immediately.

Colleen tells the jury how she thinks Jim died.

We're going to show you that what we believe happened is that she enticed Timie into some type of maybe some sexual liaison or something that she was going to do, made him sit in the chair.

Then Sandy stabbed him to death.

She says.

She warns the jury not to believe the story.

The defense is going to tell that there was a burglar there.

What we're going to be able to show you is that there was no way for any.

Burglar to enter that house.

There was no.

Reason for anybody to have anything to do against timing.

He was a loved person at his work and in the neighborhood.

There was no vendetta from anybody.

Colleen thinks Sandy could have made it to look like a breaken to cover her tracks.

She tells the jury to not trust Sandy about her health, about her relationship with Jim, and about her version of events the night Jim died and.

I didn't hear anything because the jacuzzi was going, and that's broken, by the way, and I can't turn it off if I wanted to, because it's broken, and the noise was so loud from the jacuzzie that I couldn't hear my husband getting stabbed, couldn't hear it.

So if this were a courtroom TV drama, we could maybe see Colleen make her way to the jury, looking each of them intently in the eye.

Maybe she'd rest her hand on the wooden divider separating the jury from the rest of the court.

Because this is her moment, the crescendo of her opening argument.

We believe that we're going to be able to prove this case to you beyond a reasonable doubt.

Don't know that I have motive here, but There's no other way, any other thing could have happened other than she just brutally murdered her husband.

Again, continuing my imagined version of what she did, Colleen pauses, ensuring that the jury heard those last words, that she Sandy brutally murdered her husband.

Thank you.

She thanks the jury and takes her seat.

But even if they accept that Sandy enticed her husband into a sexual liaison before murdering him, how is that possible?

When Sandy was found trapped in a closet, her hands and feet tied.

A video is played in court.

The shaky hand held camera hands across the disheveled bedroom belonging to Jim and Sandy Melgar.

This is the video the police took the night of Jim's murder, capturing the scene of the crime.

The room is a mess, the bedsheets, rumpled clothes everywhere.

The camera moves into the bathroom, where we see the remnants of their celebratory evening drinks set on the edge of the chacuzzi, a tub of cream with a strawberry perched on top.

Then we see a gloved hand pull a white satin chair in front of the closet door.

The Sheriff's Department did a video showing you can be on the inside of the bathroom and pull the rug so the chair wedges up against the door.

They can show you that that can happen, that she could have done that, and that is what she did.

To Colleen.

This video is proof that Sandy could have shut herself in the closet, put the chair on a piece of fabric, making sure that half of it was outside and the other half inside.

Sandy could have cracked the door slightly, just enough to place her hand on the top of the chair, making sure it hooks underneath the door handle, close the door, then crouched down and pulled the part of the chair that is inside of the closet towards her, causing the chair to be set in place, locking herself in.

This theory clicked for juror aar and A and they showed how you can pull that chair with a rug underneath it to make it look like the door was actually blocked so.

A person couldn't get out.

So that was like, oh, okay, that.

Makes sense, But how could she have done all of that when she was found with her hands tied behind her back.

Well, Colleen has an answer for that too, Sandy tied herself up.

Colleen stands before the jury and takes out a piece of fabric, its ends tied together.

She methodically loops it around one of her wrists and a figure eight pattern.

Then, with both hands behind her back, she twists the material around the other wrist, holding her forearms parallel with each other, each hand gripping the opposite elbow.

The binding looks tied around her wrists, but Colleen shows she can easily slip her hands free, so Sandy could have tied her own hands behind her back.

The prosecution was able to demonstrate to the jury that you can bind your hands behind your back and make it look convincingly real and not have anybody.

Actually tie you up.

So that was the big thing for me, is well, okay, yeah, I guess you can bind yourself.

The only problem was that wasn't the way that Sandy was tied up.

That was not at all consistent with the testimony of the only two witnesses who saw her tied up.

To Mac Sandy's defense attorney, Colleen's demo doesn't match with what actually happened.

She wasn't tied at the risk, she was tied with her arms behind her back.

The ligatures ran from her wrist up basically to below her elbow.

And when you look at the crime scene unit photographs of Sandy's arms, guess what?

She has red marks consistent with that on her arms.

So, if you remember, Sandy was cut free by her brother in law, herman, and his wife before the police arrived.

Herman gives evidence in court to say her arms were bound so tightly behind her back that he couldn't untie the knots and needed scissors to cut her free.

While Aaron may be convinced of Colleen's arguments, there's another question that looms across the entire trial.

How can this poor little sick lady commit murder?

That's what I saw Sandra.

I was surprised by the picture she portrayed of her physical being.

And can you say a little bit more about that?

What is that she walked with her kine when she walked into the courtroom.

I needily questioned that she couldn't have done it because she looked so frail and unhealthy the way she presented herself.

The prosecutor, Colleen Barnett, argues that it didn't matter how strong or how frail Sandy might have been, because she believes Sandy planned the whole thing and took Jim completely by surprise.

So she gets Himie to sit down in the chair and maybe she's massaging his neck or whatever, I don't know what, and then she pulls it out and then while he isn't looking, she makes a strike straight up all the way to his neck.

That's what the first strike is.

Jimie of course, gets up to try to defend himself, turns around and that's when she gets him on the thumb and that's when the blood starts spurting out onto the chair.

This was the first strike, and then she had him.

There was no place for him to go.

As you saw, there's only two feet wide and not that deep.

He was just stabbed to death.

She had the knife.

Colleen points out that jim wasn't a big guy.

At five foot seven, he was a bit taller than Sandy, but she's heavier than his one hundred and twenty five pounds, and the stab wounds weren't particularly deep, three inches at most, which gets Duror Air and Day thinking.

It made sense that she didn't have to be superwoman, strong or any of those other things you would think a murderer would have to do to murder somebody.

But there's also the matter of Sandy's health.

She's had her hips replaced, has epilepsy, and loopis an Ever since her police interview, she has pointed to her health as a possible explanation for not knowing what happened at the night Jim was killed.

Sandy suspects she a seizure and blacked out.

I want to go into that.

Colleen has her medical records from Sandy's primary care doctor and asks a witness to read them to the court.

Under seizure disorder.

What does it say that she was stable?

Reads the witness.

Sandy's medical records show that, despite fairly regular checkups, she hasn't reported having a single seizure in the four years before Jim's murder.

According to Colleen, yes, Sandy had a condition that could cause seizures, but it was stable, controlled by medication.

Sandy hadn't felt good, she had been resting a lot.

She had been experiencing auras, which are many seizures.

Defense attorney Allison Seacrest argues that those medical records don't tell the full story or reflects Sandy's health in the months before Jim's death.

If she's using her illnesses and she's saying she can veniently had a seizure and then a blackout for twelve hours when her drugs were supposedly controlling these things, and she was not complaining to her doctors, maybe she did blackout, but I can't find any evidence that.

She did.

Over ten days.

Colleen tears into Sandy's claim of innocence.

Colleen tells the court that she was unhappy, plotted the whole thing and locked herself in the closet and tied her own hands.

The only thing that is missing is why why would Sandy do this?

When I've ordired you, guys.

One of the things that I was a little worried about was motive, because I showed you the things we have to prove, and we've proven all of them.

We've proven all of them, but motive is not one of them.

And one of the things that I worried about being able to establish that.

She offers the jury a theory or two.

The first is the classic Jim had life insurance policies worth some half a million dollars.

She'd be getting a lot of money.

The second is religion.

Colleen argues that as a devout Jehovah's witness, Sandy couldn't divorce Jim without being ostracized.

But if I kill him and nobody finds out, I'm not ostracized and nobody finds out and I still get the money.

I can imagine Colleen locking eyes with the jury, ensuring that her last words are heard clearly.

There's zero evidence, zero evidence, zero evidence that somebody else did this, no evidence that anybody else did this.

She's guilty, ladies and gentlemen, She's guilty.

Please find her so, thank you.

Now it's the defense's turn to take the stage to try and convince the jury that the prosecution has got it all wrong and Sandy is innocent.

When it's the defense's turn to address the jury and defend Sandy, Maxiecrest makes a big decision.

He doesn't call Sandy to the stand.

Instead, he relies on a very simple but powerful argument.

It's the worst investigated case I've ever seen.

He says.

The only reason Sandy is on trial is because the police fail to do their job properly.

They had an agenda, they weren't objective, and they jumped to conclusions, and they were sloppy.

They assumed.

It's the old rubric that if two people are married and one of them's dan thee, the other one must have done it.

And that pretty much what propelled the entire investigation from the get go.

He claims, potentially crucial evidence slipped through the cracks.

There's actually a bloody thumb print on a safe in the closet where Jimi was found.

Mac tells the jury that this is the bloody smear that Liz noticed when she was packing up her old house.

When she's called as a witness, Liz tells the court she sent a photo of the bloody mark to the police and they told her it had already been processed.

And guess what, they didn't bother to analyze it.

In fact, one of the detectives said that it had been analyzed, when in fact it never had been.

The crime scene investigator tells the court that his team had spotted the blood, but they didn't swab it for DNA or toss the safe for prints.

When asked on the stand, why, he says, because we assumed it was Sandy's blood.

So I mean, again, this is indicative of what we're dealing with.

According to Mac and his fellow defense attorney, Alison Seacrest, the police cherry picked evidence that suited their case and ignored anything that didn't, like the fact that forensic analysis of the Melgar's phones and computers and a keyword search for rope not stab, crime scene and murder revealed nothing.

And according to friends, family, and neighbors, the Melgars had a healthy relationship.

There was no evidence of any kind of infidelity or animosity between the pair.

Sandra and Jim had a really loving relationship.

Then there's the lack of physical evidence linking Sandy to the murder.

Jim died in a brutal savage attack at least fifty one sharp force and blunt force injuries, thirty one what we call sharp force trauma.

He had all the hallmarks of someone who'd been eating to death.

What's startling is when you examine Sandy's hands, there was no trauma to her hands.

It's very very common in stabbing cases that if I'm holding a knife and I start to stab you, and I stab you and I stab you, it's going to produce a lot of blood.

And it's very typical that that blood will cause your hand to slip, and the assailant will likely cut his or her own hand by, you know, repeatedly wielding a bloody instrument.

In Sandy's case, the inside of her hands no cuts at all, and amazingly, she had ten beautiful fingernails, no brakes, no chips, no cracks, and yet she supposedly brutally worked him over, including hitting him with her fist.

Jim's autopsy report details fractures to a skull, bruises on his head, shoulders, torso, arms, and legs, and notes that there was internal bleeding linked to some of those bruises.

Because of the fifty one plus blunt and sharp force injuries, it was agreed to by all sides that the assailant would be covered in blood.

There was no blood found on Sandy at all.

There was no blood found on any of Sandy's clothing at all all.

The examination of her fingernails and the DNA under her fingernails no blood.

At all, and there was no evidence of a cleanup to the defense.

This proof Sandy didn't kill Jim, and make some question why the police so quickly discounted the theory of a robbery gone wrong.

They seem to believe that there was no obvious signs of a break in, no windows broken, no doors knocked in, so no robbery.

I think she was the only suspect because these officers rushed to judgment and made up their mind that because there was no forced entry into the house that it had to have been Sandy.

But there is one key sign the police may have overlooked.

Sandy told the detectives in her interrogation that the garage door could have been left open.

The garage was open when the family arrived and was able to enter the house through the unlocked interior door.

So that's how Hermann got into the house, and we believe, of course, that's how the intruders got into the house.

Did Duror Aaron Day Though this argument doesn't add up.

My thought process was, yes, the garage door may have been open, but if you go to somebody's house to rob them, why would you murder one and leave another one tied up in a closet.

It just didn't make sense that the defense said this was a robbery gone bad and person got killed.

It's Sunday, December twenty third, twenty twelve.

This is Sean CARIZL.

Harris kind of Shaff's office, Homicide sixty Henry forty two.

The current time is nine forty two pm.

Okay, ma'am, can you identify.

Yourself for me?

Sandra Milber.

One part of the story that I can't quite shake is Sandy's interview with the police the night she was found.

If you remember, she's distressed, can't remember details.

We went up to eat.

Okay, where's on the we at.

Mexican restaurant?

I think it was a.

Products pros.

Yeah, what time was that?

I wasn't.

Cucos cucos?

Uh, I'm listening about eight.

I mean, I'm just guessing.

I don't know.

How will this tape play in court to the prosecution.

Sandy's behavior proves she's dodgy, She's evasive, unclear, she seems numb, detached, and when she cries, they don't see tears.

Are you governing something else?

Why would you take a pograph?

Because I'm so stressed right now I can't even think straight.

It's not a good reason.

Well, I just don't want to use against me, That's all I'll take it.

But not just.

Because I'm stressed, And I mean.

I just beyond beyond that she.

Was making them because she would answer questions.

You know, she would avoid eye contact, she would avoid and she would mumble, and she wasn't shedding tears and emotion.

But the defense call an expert witness, a former police investigator who's reviewed the interview.

He tells the court he didn't see any sign that Sandy was trying to mislead the officers or that they ever considered she was traumatized in the victim of a serious crime, the ars screaming.

I didn't hear when he was in pain.

We know that he suffered a lot.

I need you to help me.

I need you to help me.

I need you to help me on this.

Help me, Sandra, help me.

Tell me, cousin Deny Scott, he went to a lot of pain.

Help me.

I didn't hear anything stopping.

How need help and.

I need help help me.

That's it, that's it.

I need a lawyer.

I'm not talking anymore because you guys are just trying to torture me.

Here.

We wanted the jury to hear her suggesting that maybe she ought to get a lawyer, because obviously the tenor of the questioning was absolutely unfair.

So you said, I want to stop ze lair.

They should have stopped, So that'sn't really where I blame the investigators interrogators.

Immediately after that police interview, Detective Carousel contacts the District Attorney's office to try and charge Sandy.

However, the DEA refuses, saying they need more evidence.

Here's a guy that even before they know the analysis of what the DNA may show, hours before the crime scene people had left, it's saying he's trying to get murder charges filed.

Mac wants the jury to see this as yet another example of a biased and narrow approach by the police, but Detective Sean Carosel says he was just keeping the DA informed.

No wonder why they were suspicious at the onset, and that's why I give the police credit for being suspicious that they had their murderer and they didn't need to do more investigations.

Mac then reveals his trump card.

Detective Sean Carousel has been fired.

Two of Sean Carousel's former colleagues tell the court that his work on a previous case was sloppy and that he's not truthful.

For journalists Amanda or listening to this in court, it's a slam dunk.

The fact that the lead detective had been fired and the fact that there were testimonies that the lead detective had been untruthful in other investigations would have been enough for me as a juror to say that everything about this investigation is called into question.

But she's not on the jury.

Aaron is, and he's more well forgiving.

Yeah, nobody's perfect, Maggie.

The jury aren't told the full story about why Sean Carousel was fired, only that there was an issue over a search warrant.

But the truth is he forged a search warrant in another case and lied about it.

We reached out to Sean Carasel for the story, but he didn't respond to our questions.

Closing arguments have just wrapped up in the case against a woman accused of murdering her husband and then trying to cover it up.

I told Colleen Barnett that she did the best she could.

Sandy couldn't have done it, and the evidence is so clear.

The members of the media watching end court didn't seem so sure.

Yes, Bill Well, the prosecutor arguing very strongly that Sandra Melgar did murder her husband.

Now it's up to the jury.

Sandra Melgar's fate lies in their hands.

Well, I tried to keep it help in mind.

I want to believe somebody is innocent until the stake can prove them guilty.

And then we all went back in the room kind of like, uh, okay, where do we start.

You've been listening to Hands Tied, a new eight part true crime series from BBC Studios and iHeart Podcasts.

New episodes will be released weekly, so subscribe or follow on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out.

If you like the show, please help us by spreading the word or giving us a five star review.

I'm Maggie Robinson Katz and the producer is Maggie Latham.

Sound design and mix is by Tom Brignell.

Our script consultant is Emma Weatherall production support is from Dan Martini, Elena Boutang and Mabel Finnegan Wright, and our production executive is Laura Jordan Rawl.

The series was developed by Anya Saunders and Emma Shaw at iHeart.

The Managing Executive Producer is Christina Everett, and for BBC Studios, the Executive producer is Joe Kent.

James Cook is the Creative Director A Factual for BBC Studios Audio and the Director of Audio at BBC Studios is Richard Knight.