Mario Casciaro Innocent?


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ABC featured the story of Brian Carrick, a grocery store clerk who went missing in the small town of Johnsburg, Illinois. The story takes a bunch of twists and turns, and eventually 12 years after Brian’s disappearance, the grocery store owner’s son, Mario Casciaro, gets charged with the murder and locked up for 26 years.

I will go through the list of characters to share with you who I believe and who I don’t.

I don’t believe what Shane Lamb told the truth to prosecutors the first time about Mario’s involvement. I believe Shane truly has remorse for telling that story.

With regards to Mario Casciaro, I don’t believe him when he says he was just selling his friends some of “his stash” and that it wasn’t a criminal enterprise. I do believe Mario was probably a small operation, but it seems clear from the testimony that he and Brian were selling pot, and that it was criminal. There is no evidence that Mario was involved in the murder, but the stakes in this case for Mario are no longer high.

What does it mean when the stakes are no longer high? With Mario, he is paying the ultimate price for whatever happened. If he was involved, let’s say, there is nothing to lose now by lying. Instead, he would have everything to gain. With that, there is no pressure on him if he does lie, which would cause the clues to leak. With that, I am extremely careful to say that I cannot judge a man behind bars for lying without testimony or video of him talking about it before he was locked up. This is critical because I have seen very guilty people speak from behind bars and sound innocent, because the pressure that caused clues to leak was gone!

However, there does not seem to be any evidence leading to Mario in this murder, and the evidence we do have, as Kathleen Zellner has pointed out, leads to Rob Render. Kathleen Zellner is an amazing attorney and I have full faith in her to get to the truth.

As for Rob Render, his interview was definitely odd and I did not believe him. He seemed to say anything in hopes of getting the police to leave him alone. He was extremely nervous, too, and I wonder if that came and went during the interview process, or was constant. That would reveal more information.

What I don’t understand from the show, however, is about the blood evidence. How could there be a lot of blood from a violent attack and no one see it that night when they closed up the store? Or early the next morning? Jerry Casciaro, Mario’s father, saw some reddish water and says he thought it was Hawaiian punch. Did the Casciaro’s call the police immediately? If not, why? I’m curious about this. We never heard.

I honestly need more information on this case to fully understand what happened, but I don’t believe Shane told the truth when Mario was convicted. And I’d like to see more of Mario, if there is any depositions or whatnot of him, prior to or during trial, to get to the truth in this matter. I am curious if the Casciaro’s knew that something went down, and wanted it to go away because it might be bad for business.

The Nanny Who Won’t Move Out: Who’s Lying?


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If you watched ABC 20/20 this weekend, you got to see the story of a nanny, a homeless woman, who took a job for free room and board in exchange for cooking and cleaning for a family with two boys. The agreement posted on Craiglist was clearly vague.

So who is telling the truth here?

I personally don’t believe either party and I believe both wanted something for free, and they each got more than they bargained for.

On 20/20, the reporter says the nanny claimed the original agreement was 20 hours a week. The homeowner, Marcella says back, “Ummmm….no.” To which the reporter shoots back, so what was it? Marcella says, “I would say…she probably a week ten hours.”

First off, Marcella doesn’t answer the question and jumbles her answer all up. And second, who would bring a woman into your home for 10 hours a week of work, feeds her and let her share your home? No one — that’s who. It would be much cheaper to hire someone to come in on an hourly basis and it wouldn’t invade your privacy. This is nonsense.

Ralph Bracamonte said, “It was help out with the kids when needed, to pick up little things and to maybe prep up a little bit of dinner if [Marcella] was running a little bit late.” Do you see how he minimized everything? Ralph also said the nanny was like “family” yet within two weeks things started to sour? This is inconsistent.

And on behalf of the nanny, she said this job would allow her to ” …get my legs up and take care of my heart condition.” This is flat out inconsistent. I suspect she knew the laws and thought she’d find a free home for a while and she did. She was identified on 20/20 as being “… listed on the state of California’s Vexatious Litigant List.” What does that mean? She is known to sue people without just cause. How does that translate? People use the threat of lawsuits frequently to get people to cave in or buckle to their demands.

I think they both say all we need to know to see the truth. What do you think?

My Thoughts: Kelley Cannon

When I watch the Kelley Cannon interview with ABC’s 20/20, these are my thoughts:
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  1. Kelley tries to give Jim Avila on 20/20 a new theory about what she thinks happened to her husband Jim, and who wore those gloves found outside the crime scene. We don’t get to see Kelley talk much about it as Jim Avila introduces it, but Kelley wants people to believe that she didn’t call 911 or testify because she was protecting her husband. She wants us to believe that Jim had a private life that no one knew about, that he drank and had “rough sex” with strangers. Hence, according to her, she believes it was a stranger who likely wore those gloves and killed Jim. It’s so outlandish, its humorous. Kelley Cannon is very desperate, which we see on her face.
  2. If this is true, we can be sure he had to “meet” these “strangers” somewhere, so other people would be talking or at minimum there would be a paper trail that supports this as well (phone calls, receipts for bars, nightclubs, etc) because remember these were “strangers”. So if this is what she believed all along, then why didn’t she come up with supporting evidence to her theory? I suspect because she knows it doesn’t exist!
  3. Furthermore, why would she protect a man who had a restraining order on her, and who was trying to get full custody of her kids? Does that make any sense? One cannot argue that she kept the “secret” to protect the kids (which would have been a better excuse, frankly) because if that is true, she sacrificed herself for her kids, which makes no sense. Now the kids have no parents, so we know that is a line of B.S. Kelley seems to come up with the most outlandish rubbish whenever it suits her! She is so contorted in this interview, because she desperately wants to be believed. If you ask me, she can’t handle that her old tricks aren’t working anymore!
  4. Listen when the detectives ask Kelley if Jim ever beat her. She pauses before answering and then says “Yeah” in what I would consider an upbeat tone — similar in sound to how someone might say a question. This is notable and a common tone for deceptive people. When the detective asks if she ever filed a police report, listen to her say much softer and more down tone “No.”

    The way Kelley says “Yeah” and “No” are notable to me. It’s the way she inflects that clues me in that she is not being honest. Furthermore, if this was the truth, why isn’t she volunteering to the detective how he beat her? Notice she doesn’t give him any substantiating information. Why? Surely if she was beaten, other people would have seen telltale signs but no one supports poor Kelley.

  5. Kelley tells us she didn’t file any police reports of the beatings because she was scared of Jim. I find that flat out laughable. She was so afraid of him that she threatened him once when he was in his car with the kids, and it was Jim that called 911. They played the call on 20/20. She sure was scared, wasn’t she? And then the night Jim was murdered, she tells us she went to Jim’s house –even though there was a restraining order on her. That’s shows fear, doesn’t it? Give me a break! This woman is terrible at her game.
  6. When Jim Avila starts speaking to Kelley, look at how tense she is. She is showing incredible tension. Watch her let out a breath of air as she talks to Jim Avila. If she is innocent, why is she so tense? She clearly contorts her face. I think it is because she is trying to see if she can convince us of her “new” story. Not.
  7. Kelley says, “I didn’t do this and for some reason or another, nobody’s interested in finding out who did.” Why isn’t she interested, if she is innocent? She is throwing out empty, meaningless words here.
  8. Listen to how Kelley talks about herself about being at Walgreens. “That’s just B.S. That’s somebody else..no. That’s that girl he had the affair with.”

    I think everyone can see that is Kelley in the surveillance video. It shows Kelley will lie whenever it suits her. Also, it is ironic that she talks that Jim had an affair with a “girl” here yet she told the cops at one point he was “queer”. Another inconsistency. Kelley is inconsistent on a regular basis.

  9. When Jim Avila asks Kelley if she killed her husband, we see tears. I suspect these are tears of self-pity, personally. She says somberly, “No”. Why isn’t she mad when she is asked this, if she is innocent?
  10. Then Jim Avila asks her if she knows who did it (murdered Jim), and she says in a controlled and muted angry tone, “No.” She doesn’t want people to know she is angry here, but her voice gives her away. She is angry she can’t point the finger at someone else!

    Wait a minute. She doesn’t know who did it? In my first point above, didn’t she tell Jim Avila that she suspected she knew who the gloves belonged to? She hinted strongly there that it was one of his stranger sex partners. Why isn’t she sticking to that here? Kelley flip-flops worse than a pair of shoes walking down the street of the same name.

    This jury absolutely called this one right. It’s no surprise they returned a verdict in 55 minutes. Good going, jury. This woman needs to be exactly where she is!!

Kelley Cannon Speaks to 20/20

Do you believe Kelley Cannon? What do you see when you watch her speak here? Check back later for my thoughts.

Linda Dolloff’s 911 Call

What do you hear when you listen to this?