At Capital One, we don't just use technology, we architect it. Our teams have true end-to-end product ownership, shipping distributed systems that handle high concurrency at scale. No single server bottlenecks, engineered beyond legacy downtime, and operating right here in downtown Toronto. That's technology at Capital One. Search technology at Capital One Canada. My rec league goalie says he plays for the love of the game. You gave up six goals last week, Steve. Maybe play to win, huh? Like with Bet365, I get paid the second my team goes up big with early payout and can cash out at any time before the game ends.
Come on, Steve. Bet365, the home of winning early. Must be 19 and older. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you or someone you know is concerned about gambling, visit ConnexOntario.ca or call 1-866-531-2600. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay and choo-choo! Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host.
I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another absolutely crazy edition of Small Town Murder Express all aboard the murder train pulling away from the station. We have a crazy story today about a very crazy person. It's just it's a wild story. So we will get into that before we do, though. Definitely head over to shut up and give me murder dot com. Get your tickets for live shows. Definitely do that. We have some coming up here now. The first Small Town Murder Show with tickets available is going to be May 2nd in Denver. There is still a few left for the March 21st. Your stupid opinion show in Phoenix. Get those. We got Denver, Royal Oak, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento, Tarrytown, Boston.
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Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Here we go. Let's do it. We are going to Oklahoma this week. Here we are. We are going to Velma, Oklahoma. Velma. Isn't that popular? What? Velma, Oklahoma? Yeah. No. Feels like I've heard of it. Yeah, no, you haven't. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's mistaken because there's like 600 people here. It's probably confusing it with somewhere else. This is in southern Oklahoma, kind of south central. Selma.
Selma. That's what I've heard of. I think we've done an episode about Selma, Oklahoma. That's why. About an hour and a half to Oklahoma City. About three hours and 40 minutes to Potow, Oklahoma, which was our last Oklahoma episode. Episode 641. That was the serial killer search. That was that Reese guy. He was just a horrible man. Horrible looking guy. Just awful all around. This is in Stevens County. Area code 580. Population 601. So 600. And you, Jim. That's what it is. And you. That's it. You're going there. Leaving that extra one just for you. Median household income here. 68,333.
which is right about the national average. Median home price, real low here, $140,300. Wow. Yeah, I mean, it's the middle of nowhere. I don't know where you're going to work exactly. But to have decent scratch, almost 70 grand they're making, they're doing well. It's not bad. A little bit of history of this town here kind of began to develop as people started following the cattle herds along the Chisholm Trail through here. They established a post office at Velma, which was in Indian territory at the time too. On September 25th, 1886, it was named for Velma Dobbins, who was the daughter of a local merchant.
Of course. How do you convince the rest of the town to name the town after your daughter? It's so weird. Well, Velma's a smoke show, and we never want to forget her. I guess. Maybe. Maybe she was, I don't know, daughter of a longtime merchant. Maybe she, like, slipped people, like, free things. They were like, we love Velma. She throws an extra ice cream bar on top of there when you get some. So at the time of its founding, it was in Pickens County, which was in the Chickasaw Nation. It was mainly a farming community.
Cotton was the main crop. And then after a while, it became about cattle and hog operations. That's it. Yeah. Then oil came in as well. So here we go. Yeah. Now there's a lot of oil and petroleum related industries all around here. I think that's where the jobs are. Some reviews of this town. Here is five stars. I liked how small of a town it was. Everyone knows everyone. I would like to see more jobs become available in the area to help out the residents. Just like we thought. Yeah. That's about what a small town is. Everyone knows everyone. Not a lot of opportunity, but you know, I like it anyway. So this person pushed on. I don't know if that or they're just got an itchy.
D finger. Just an itchy typer finger and messed up there. Reminisce of times past. You never know. Here's five stars. Velma's a very small community where everyone knows who you are. I graduated from Velma Alma High School, Velma-Alma, and my three children also attend public school there. It's a close-knit, spelled wrong, community, and if you ever need, someone is always there to lend a hand. They have great schools, but I would like to see renovations of some of the school buildings that need update.
They got renovations but couldn't get close-knit? I think they didn't get renovations. I would like to see renovations, but they spelled renovations correctly, but knit is N-I-T. So there's that. And then finally, again, five stars. There's no review of this town that isn't five stars. Wow. Velma is a small town in Oklahoma. Everyone knows who you are. Every review is like, you're going to know everybody. Most people here are related in some way. Well, that's scary. Yeah, that's not good. That shouldn't be like that, probably, unless people are fucking their cousins. Yeah, your dating scene sucks. It's real bad. It's safe and very family-friendly. The school system is outstanding in academic sports and other extracurricular activities.
Okay, how? There's got to be like 30 kids in the school. There's 600 people. How many kids could there be at high school? They're all cousins. Yeah, they're all cousins. I don't know how you'd even form a football team. The Velma Cousins would be the name of it. Other than that, I don't know. Oh, how fucking great would that be? What? To be everybody who can play football? The Velma Cousins. It's just two people that are a little like, their eyes are a little funny. And you're like. It's like a garbage pail kid face right on the side. Too close. Just kind of a goofy kid with like one eye up high and one eye down low. The Cousins. A couple of missing teeth. A little drool coming down the lip.
A little bit. A little bit. Things to do here. Well, Velma is home of the annual settlers, annual old settlers picnic and rodeo. Oh. Which since statehood has been here. They've been doing this since it became a state. Has to be in this location. Has to be. The event is known for attracting the best calf ropers in the United States. Wow, is that right? I got it on my schedule. Of course, I'll be there. You know, me and my calf roping skills. It's very specific though. The calf roping. Calf roping. Yeah. Bull roping. The best.
So I found the schedule for it here. Uh-oh. Oh, we got peewee barrels, junior barrels, ladies open barrels, which is a nice way to meet the ladies. They don't move away very much and, you know, just in barrels. You don't have to break the seal. Oh, look, I like this one. That's crazy. Ranch bronc, bull riding, mutton busting. Gotta have mutton busting every time. It's for the kids. It's for the kids, you know. Mini bronc. That just sounds like a little tiny horse. Yeah. Sounds very fun. I want it to be. Junior double mugging.
What is it? Junior double mugging. I don't know what that is. There's double mugging also. Two mugs of milk? Maybe. Calf roping, ribbon roping, breakaway team roping. Okay. There's also food trucks, a mechanical bowl, in case you really want to hurt yourself. Goat roping. That's the only one I condone. Otherwise, it feels like animal abuse. Well, yeah, it's a mechanical bowl. It's just you getting thrown off and hurting yourself. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. Or some perverted guy that operates it every time, tips it forward and shakes it to jiggle the girl's boobs. Every time. Obviously, yeah. I think that's what the crowd is into. That's the point of it. That's crazy. Goat roping.
The Oklahoma Horseshoeing School is sponsoring a lot of this. We have the Queen Coronation. The Calf Scramble. They're running. Let them run. Scramble. Jesus Christ. And then we have music, too, of course. You've got to have that. You've got to have music. We have Wednesday Night. What kind of music goes with this, James? Hardcore hip-hop. Yes. Hardcore. Gucci Mane headline. Yeah. You have to be from an inner borough. You've got to be from maybe Bushwick. Bed-Stuy might be a little too mainstream, even. Let's see here. We've got Shannon Raines on Wednesday Night. Yeah.
I think I understand what she's singing. She lives here. Dane Ledford Band. They do too. The East Cash Creek. C-A-C-H-E. Cash, like you got a cash of shit here. And then Saturday night, the Bobby Dale Band.
Locals. Nice. Locals. Although Oklahoma does country music very well, so those guys are all probably decent. I guess. I mean, maybe they're just into the calf scramble and they needed to be able to see. You never know. They thought it was veal omelets. Yeah, they're like, oh, we're getting a calf scramble. Yeah, oh, look at that. It's a morning time fucking brunch ritual here. Let's talk about some murder. Let's do it. Let's do this stuff. All right, let's see what we got here. Let's go back in time. Not too long here. Everything's still pretty much the same. 2012.
Yeah. Phone's pretty much the same in your pocket. Different operating system, but same phone. Just one body style earlier of pretty much every car. That's it. Everything's pretty much the same. Same social media minus TikTok. There you go. June 6th, 2012, 8.15 p.m.
Okay, we're going to go to the TP Totem convenience store. Okay. The TP Totem. It's either a convenience store or a bar. You know one of the two, obviously. There's a woman named Tammy Wilkerson who enters the TP Totem at around 8.15 that evening just to do some light shopping, as you do at a TP Totem. A can of cat food, maybe an air freshener for the car. That's it, maybe a soda, a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos, whatever. That's what she's got to get. She gets there, she walks in, doesn't see the clerk behind the counter, figures he's in the back room or the bathroom or something, so she hangs out for a minute. No clerk. Nothing. Store's empty.
This isn't a place that's staffed by multiple people. It's a tiny store in the middle of nowhere. So one at a time. One at a time. Guy coming in as you leave. That's it. So she looks around and she's looking and hello. You know, so she there's a storeroom there that she can see and it's kind of cracked. So she peeks her head in and hello. Maybe he's back there. You know, who knows? But she sees no clerk, but she does see a giant pool of blood. Oh, a large pool of blood. So she's like, hmm, well, that looks like probably the clerk. Yeah.
Just dematerialize into blood and just poof, he exploded. What happened? So she immediately went and called the Velma Police Department. She took that option. Yep. And this is such a small town. This is amazing. Imagine if you went into a Circle K and there was no clerk, you'd go, I don't know, and you'd leave. That's it, right? I guess I'll go to the QT that's 12 feet away. There's one by my house that there is fucking never anyone behind the counter. I literally have to go, hello? And they go, oh, didn't see you. Didn't see me. And they like pop up behind the counter. I'm not trying to surprise you. Hey, how you doing? All right. Sorry about that. They're like off the Circle. It's a pretty big ass. But he's down the way.
And there's like a room tucked around the corner. You didn't see me because you were hiding? You were hiding. You're hiding from me, damn it. Quit hiding from me. You lousy son of a bitch. And it's like three times out of five that I go in there, I have that exact same experience. That's hilarious. Well, does you ever find just a large pool of blood where the clerk shows in? That's good. I'll be honest. I won't feel bad. No. I don't know him. So she not only calls the police department, but it's such a small town that she knows the other clerk.
So she just she just calls the other clerk. Hey, Melissa, do you know what the fuck? Basically, like what's going on here? Who's supposed to be working tonight? The other 12 hour shift is not here. Yeah, I was getting that. Imagine you went to Circle K. No one was there. So you're like, I'm gonna call the other guy that works here. Hello.
Who knows? So she lives nearby, so they were trying to get her to secure the store, essentially. So the police investigate at the store, and they document the interior of the store, and they look at the pool of blood, and they bring people in, because obviously this is more blood than someone should lose, probably. So there's probably a problem. Now, the missing clerk is a 21-year-old young man named Miles Bench. Okay. Okay, so that's what's going on. Now, at the same time they're there investigating this large pool of blood and this mysteriously disappearing clerk, they get a call from a worried family that their 16-year-old daughter, Braley, hasn't come home.
She's missing two. She's missing two. So the cops are like, what the fuck? We get zero missing people ever. And now we get this guy disappearing into a pool of blood and a 16 year old who's not home. Is there some kind of serial killer loose or what here? The sheriff said, we've been on the scene approximately an hour at the convenience store or so when we get a missing persons report of a 16 year old girl. So our emphasis at that time changed to the location of that girl as quickly as we could. Again, small town police force, they literally can't walk and chew gum at the same time. They got three guys if they're, you know, they're putting it on whoever, whichever is the most important. And they go, well, she's 16. At least he's an adult.
Right. And judging by the blood, whatever's happened to him has already happened. So let's try to find the 16-year-old. It's rare that they hang on to a dude and do things to him. Yeah, it's a little bit strange. Now, who are these missing people? Who are they? First of all, let's talk about Miles, the missing clerk. A childhood friend of Miles' brother talks a little bit about that. By the way, Miles' name is Miles Sterling Bench. And he's born in 1991. And they said that he was an extremely polite child that didn't get into trouble, one of his neighbors said. They said he did have a learning disability and was in special education classes as he grew up.
Now, this is not like last week's special education student that we talked about. Oh, yeah. This guy has like some learning disabilities, but his intelligence is fine. Functioning, yeah. Functioning. The guy we had last week was like medically stupid. Yeah, like a doctor could put a stethoscope up to him and go, you're a moron, yes. You don't even need, like he was really, really dumb. Yeah, the thermometer says stupid. Yeah, oh, it says stupid. Shake it out. So it was determined normal intelligence, but experienced processing delays. Miles does. Yeah.
His eighth grade science teacher said that Miles was a kid who wanted to do very well and wanted to get out of special education. She said he was always trying to improve himself. He was a very good kid. He was kind to other kids, had a good sense of humor. Yeah, that tells you, like, if you can study your way out of special ed, it's not necessarily, it's that you didn't absorb something earlier that you were supposed to absorb. Yeah, there's a lot of kids who have learning disabilities, maybe they're dyslexic, they have other things. So due to his work, he was able to transfer to a co-taught classroom in the eighth grade. So that's really cool. The teachers found him to be respectful, quiet, and polite. There you go. Just happy to be here. Just happy to be here, everybody. There's a social worker that says,
Any issues involving Bench were minor incidents that never escalated, and they didn't believe Bench ever posed any danger to anybody or anything like that. He's not an aggressive kid, so they're asking about that. He made the football team at school, which is a big deal, which, like I said, there's 600 people in the town. How many kids could possibly try out for the football team? Pretty much whoever tries out will find something for you to do. We'll have you on the team. You're a special teamer. There you go. You'll run down to the kickoff. One guy who was a teammate in high school said that he knew Miles through sports and said that Miles lacked understanding of blocking schemes in football.
and lacked understanding of other sports-related concepts. There's a certain level of dumb to not even be able to understand football. Because there's literally NFL players, and we do crime in sports, so we know this. There's NFL players that were defensive linemen that were so stupid that coaches wrote R and L on their shoes, so they just knew either straight right or left was the rush, and they couldn't remember which way was right and left. There's a story of a center, I believe, that the quarterback would tap either ass-cheek to let him know which direction we were going this play.
Interesting. That's odd because centers are usually the smartest guy on the team usually. They have to keep everybody's shit in respect. If it's not the center, it could have been one of the guards tapping a tackle. But how would you tap the right side or the left side if you're on his right? I don't know how it went. It's a tough one. But there's a story of somebody getting tapped one way or the other. Somebody's dumb. July of 2005, a lady, a lady now, a young lady at the time named Karen Doyle moved into the house behind Miles' house. Miles was 14 at the time. Now, on several occasions, this woman observed.
miles through a window as she swam in her backyard pool. She said that he appeared to be masturbating. So he's just jerking it to the neighbor swimming. That's a pretty obvious emotion. Yeah, just in the window jerking it. It's very rare that that's mistaken. He just saw Fast Times at Ridgemont High one too many times and he's like, any chick in a pool? So that's interesting. During Labor Day weekend, she said his sexual aggression got a little bit more. She heard him shouting, fuck me, fuck me, as she came out of the water.
That's, you know, try that as a come online. It's a fascinating pick-up. Rather than, hi, you know, how's it going? Buy a drink? Try, fuck me, fuck me. Try that one, see if it works. That probably works better for the ladies. I would say, oh, that would work fine. As a lady, you could literally do that. You could come out just drooling and pulling your hair out going, fuck me, fuck me, and some guy go, all right, I mean, I guess. Right now, all right. There was five guys there, two of them would be taking their pants off at least. Whereas women would run horrified from a man going, fuck me, fuck me, while he took their pants off. So she was frightened by this. At one point.
when she glanced, as he's yelling, fuck me, fuck me, she glanced toward his house and observed that he was completely nude and leaning out of the bedroom window with his hands in the air. Fuck me, fuck me, nude hanging out the window. How horny are you? Good Lord. I've never been there, yeah.
That's wild. She called the cops because she was scared. I don't blame her. She continued to live behind the house, but remained fearful of him. And she said, despite law enforcement intervening, he continued to be super weird and would peek out of the blinds at her and all that kind of shit. He's a little pervert. Plus, he was reprimanded on several occasions for inappropriate behavior, quote unquote, toward female students while he attended school in Illinois. They were from Illinois originally. He was known to inappropriately touch his female classmates while attending schools in Ada and Davis as well.
All right. So that seems to be his thing that he does. It's a common occurrence. Yeah. This is how he does it. Yeah. His dick is like a homing beacon. It just goes wild. Scary. That's scary for girls. That's rough. Now, he had some trouble at home. The Will County Sheriff's Department had to respond to the house on July 27th, 2008. There was a domestic altercation involving Miles and a stepfather. Oh, boy. His stepfather's name is Farland Huff.
Farland. F-A-R-L-A-N. Farland. Farland Huff. So when the deputies arrived, they found Farland Huff with facial injuries. His eye was almost swollen shut and he had a cut above it. Dang, Miles. Miles was 17 at the time. Miles has been taking martial arts training for years, too. His goal is to be an MMA fighter. That's what he wants to do. Oh, my. Which he's just dumb enough to do it. I mean, he is, I don't know. He's just sexually aggressive to do it. Yeah, he did get out of special education, so I'm not quite sure he's dumb enough for the MMA fighting. I'm not positive. So, now, he was 17 at the time, Miles. He had no injuries from this fight. And they ended up arresting.
Miles for domestic abuse. Wow. His stepdad said what happened, that Miles got in an argument with his stepdad, which was about him finishing taking the trash out. That's how this started. He started it and didn't finish it. Sure. The mother, Dana, heard the argument and came up to Miles' room. This is great parenting. They're in an argument, stepdad and son. So she says, why don't you two just duke it out? Go ahead and fight. What? She directed her teenage son and her husband to fight each other.
What the fuck? I don't know how to fix it. You guys punch each other. Out of ideas much? Like, holy shit. I'm devoid. So, Farland took his glasses off to start fighting. Took his glasses off to put him on a dresser. When he did that, he had his back turned. Fucking Miles sucker punched him in the eye from the side and behind. He then got him and basically got him in a fucking MMA chokehold after that. And he was starting to pass out and he called out, Dana, if you let him, and then he couldn't talk anymore. And he didn't stop until his mom told him to stop. Wow. Yeah, like a fucking animal. So, it's odd.
Now, his stepfather said he still loves him, and he loved him after that, and he didn't even want to press charges after that. He didn't want to follow through, and he wouldn't testify or anything because he didn't want to ruin the kid's life, basically. He said that he's been raising the kid since he was one years old, like he's his own son, a year old. And he said he even potty trained him and taught him how to drive. Oh, my God. This is his dad. Yep. So he said he wouldn't press charges, and that's that. And so apparently at school— Miles is frustrated and mad. Yeah. At school, he got picked on a lot. Yeah.
He had a few friends, but most of the time he'd be alone. He's very awkward around girls, as we've discovered. Fuck me, fuck me. That's the most awkward thing I've ever heard of a human being trying to get laid before. So that's a lot. Both apparently his mom and his stepdad would work with him to help basically try to make him hide the fact that he was different, that he's a weirdo. At Capital One, we don't just use technology. We architect it. Our teams have true end-to-end product ownership, shipping distributed systems that handle high concurrency at scale.
No single server bottlenecks, engineered beyond legacy downtime, and operating right here in downtown Toronto. That's technology at Capital One. Search technology at Capital One Canada. My teammate says he plays pickup basketball, quote, for the cardio. Well, there's more to it than that, Sean. Like with Bet365, I get paid the second my team goes up big with early payout and can cash out at any time before the game ends. Sean's getting his steps, but I'm getting paid. Bet365, the home of winning early. Must be 19 and older, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you or someone you know is concerned about gambling, visit connexontario.ca or call 1-866-531-2600. Terms and conditions apply. They encouraged him to enter the military because they thought that would straighten him out.
It's an old school thought, but yeah. And sometimes it does and sometimes it absolutely doesn't. You never know. It depends on what the problems are. So he enters the Navy. 2009, 2010-ish. It doesn't last long. No? No, it doesn't last long. His commanding officer said that he required extra attention and did not do well in boot camp because he was slow and could not complete more than a three-step process.
I've known people like this. What is that? What's a three step process? I've known people like this. I know I was a process server and there was one guy who was a process server slash bounty hunter in the fucking office. And yeah, his like father-in-law was his boss and he was the private investigator. And he said basically like anything that was a little complicated, he'd give to other people because he said, you can't give this guy more than.
A to B and then B to C. He'll fuck it up after that. Loop, swoop, pull is all he's got. That's it. Goat, give this to this person. Take this and give it to that person. Anything beyond that, he said, I know that's where his limitation ends. This will be a Rubik's Cube. He'll just wander off into nowhere, come back with the wrong thing. Wow. He'll fuck everything up if you give him. He won't even remember the first two steps if you give him three. This kid at least does three-step process, which is more than that guy did. They sent him to a special program in the Navy, which is akin to special ed, which I did not know we had in the military. I mean, if we need that, that's not a soldier, right? I mean, I think, I don't know.
You can't. That's what I mean. I don't know. If we need these people to do specific things, then we need them to do specific things. And if they can't do it, then they can't do it. That's it. You're talking about the defense of a country. If he had one leg, they wouldn't put him in like a special, they'd say you got one leg, you can't be in the Navy. I'm sorry. Like we can't use you in war. There's really nothing we can do with you. You know, no offense. Haven't you seen 300? Yeah, it doesn't work. So that's that. And they also said that he was, it was apparent that he was never going to finish bootcamp. He couldn't do it.
like he just couldn't boot camp boot camp he couldn't get through which is hard but mentally as far as intelligence wise I don't know how draining it is it's draining in terms of endurance and yeah it's meant to be conditioning not necessarily challenging not a lot of giant chalkboards or you gotta remember formulas or anything like that I don't think so she there's a neighbor who said that she saw him during the time he was in the Navy and said he didn't look like the boy she knew anymore she said she didn't know it was wrong but there was something drastically wrong with him she could tell huh So in addition to all this, like we said, he'd been receiving martial arts training for years. Yeah. You want him to be a dangerous, angry idiot. That's much better. They said that he practiced regularly all the time. His cousin Clayton, who lives with him, by the way, he lives with his grandparents and his cousin and a whole bunch of people here. And mom and stepdad? No, no, no. Grandparents he lives with now as far as when he was working at the store. Got it. Yeah. So his cousin Clayton, who lives with him, said that he wanted to go to California to be an MMA fighter. That was his goal.
And he was going to do that in 2012. In 2011, he was released from the military here on a conditional discharge because he had pled guilty to a charge of possession of a stolen vehicle. That was while he was AWOL from the Navy. Oh, he got in trouble in the Navy, then went AWOL, then stole a car. So then they kicked him out there. Yeah. His file says he deserted from the Navy and he admitted to stealing a car while he was AWOL. He was hiding at the home of one of his friends when they found him. So, yeah, they said that his one of his friends here said that his.
behavior and demeanor as a teenager and his behavior and demeanor while he was in the Navy and immediately after the Navy were much different. They said that he had contact with him during the AWOL incident and said he had a lot of enthusiasm about joining the Navy and said that after the Navy incident, they're calling it when he got in trouble when AWOL and stole a car, they said he became, quote, increasingly weird and delusional. I think that's been going on a while. The romance with the Navy is over. It's over. The bloom is off the rose, off the naval rose. Then he gets arrested for shoplifting. By May of 2012, though, he's got a new gig at the TP Totem convenience store in the town of Velma here. He's 21. He lived just outside of town. He lives with his grandparents and his cousin, Clayton Jensen, who regularly drives him to work. Yeah. Okay. Now, absolute, a model employee, clearly, as we'll talk about. So at the store, he begins to approach young and female customers.
Not only in the store, even if they're like around the store outside, I'm running out of the front door. Hey, how's it going? Fuck me. Fuck me. I'm sure that's what he's thinking. He realized that was bad. Just start a conversation. No, he would make physical contact with their bodies and intent and then attempt to entice or lure them to be alone with him. He inappropriately touched a 16 year old girl named Jesse Anderson.
in the beginning of June, Anderson said that he visited the snow cone stand across the street from the teepee totem where she worked. She worked at the snow cone stand. And he spoke to her, but the conversation was nothing more than casual customer conversation. Then, the next day, he chased her as she was driving off in her car. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
He asked her for her phone number, her address, where she was going, and if he could take her out on a date sometime. Where are you going? What are you doing? Who are you hanging out with? Do you want to go out sometime? I don't know you, Snow Cone customer. Where do you live? Where do you live? I have a blue raspberry. Where do you live? What's your name? Who's your daddy? Like, what the fuck is this? This is a lot. Is he home? Did he go and leave you all alone? Yeah, exactly. She was freaked out, understandably. She didn't feel like she knew him and didn't want to consent. She didn't consent to the kiss on the hand, so she wouldn't provide him with the information that he wanted, and she didn't want to go out with him.
anything like that. She went home and reported this to her parents. This creepy guy works across the street, whatever. Now, right around the same time, same day or a day before or after this, there's a woman named Gina Mercer and he inappropriately touched her while she was shopping at the TP totem. She said she entered the store with her daughter, with her daughter, someone who has a child with them. He's like, I'm going to go feel her up.
What are you doing? Other than him and her and the daughter, nobody else was there. He came up behind her while she was at the soda fountain, put his arms around her and under her breasts. So she freaked out and said, don't touch me. I don't even know who you are. And slapped him on the shoulder. Like, get the fuck away from me. He said, this is a wild and telling line. Quote, oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were a high school girl. He thought he was giving out a compliment, but that's creepy as fuck. I usually feel up all the high school girls that come in here. I didn't realize.
He thought that was going to reset this really fucked up situation and doesn't realize it made it worse. I usually creep on the high school chick, so I'm sorry about that. Wow. So she said, this is not cool, completely unacceptable, not interested, get the fuck away from me. Good for her that she's got a high school figure still. That's not bad. She's got a baby. She might be 21, but still. So she reports this incident to the owner of the store, who you would imagine, because he just started working there, would fire him immediately for this. Right now.
No, you don't understand, boss. I thought it was worse. Get the fuck out. Nope. Continues to work there. As a matter of fact, we'll find out. He gets like a promotion. It's amazing. Well, you see, the last guy would just write people right by the Doritos. So this is actually a step up. Who the fuck runs this place? Dude. So June 5th, 2012, Brianna Stinchcomb is in there. She's 15. She's at the teepee totem. She's at the glass door to the refrigerated soda. He crept up behind her as she turned to walk to the candy section and pick up some candy. He's kind of by her.
He then followed her to the soda fountain again. Oh, boy. These fountain drinks are a problem. They're busy. You got your back to everybody. Yeah. Although the cups were perfectly straight, he came up next to her, reached his right arm around her, and acted as if he was straightening up the cups. Hey, how you doing, sweetheart? Yeah. As he did that, the side of his body came in contact with her. Then he said that she was attractive. Yeah. And then he moved his hand and asked her if she wanted to, quote, go in the back and exchange life stories.
She's 15. Her life story is, I was born, I went to school, and now I'm getting a soda. That's my life story. I'm a 15-year-old who lives in a town with 600 people in it. I don't have a life story. I think life stories is code word for bodily fluids. Exactly. I don't think there was going to be a story told. Nope. And she was smart enough, and I don't know if this was true or not, but she said that she can't because her mother's outside waiting for her.
So he continued to make her feel uncomfortable as he rang up her items at the register. He told her that he was only working at the store, this is wild, to make enough money to get back into the Navy. You've got to put up a stake when you go to the Navy. They go, well, I don't know. What are you going to contribute to this fund? We're building battleships. They're pretty expensive. You've got to buy your way into the Navy. Everyone knows that.
Okay. He asked her about her interests and he found out that she liked music and he said, well, I play guitar. We should hang out sometime and play guitar together. And she was freaked out and immediately told her mother that this creepy guy was coming out. So June 6th, 2012, by then he's after three weeks of training, he's now a trusted employee and was given the keys to close the store by himself.
Even though constant people have been complaining. So on June 6th, 2012, this is the day everybody disappeared. He talked with his cousin Clayton for about two hours that day and said that he was planning on going to California like soon, like the next few days to be an MMA fighter. So Clayton dropped him off at work before 2 p.m. He said he had a little sore throat, but he was normal otherwise. Miles was. 7.30 p.m.
is when a young lady heads into town. This is Brianna Ray Henry or Braley. I'm sorry, not Brianna. That's the last. I got confused with the last person. Braley, B-R-A-Y-L-E-E. Ray is R-E-A, Henry. So Braley, R-E-A. Her dad is R-A-Y is his middle name. So I think that's like the girl version. So Braley is the 16 year old that was missing in the beginning. She drove into Velma around 730 to stop at the grocery store. There is surveillance footage of her at the grocery store. So you know she was around then. After that, she went to the teepee totem to get some soda or to get some candy and a fountain drink, which we know is bad news.
Now, a little bit about Braley here. She's born September 20th, 1995. So, yeah, 16 at the time. She's born in Lawton, Oklahoma, which is down in the southwest of the state. Billy Ray Henry and Gina Renee Henson are her parents. She's got an older brother named Justin. She's got two younger siblings from her mother's next marriage. She is a junior at Velma High School at the time. This is wild. She is an achiever, this girl. She's president of the FFA, Future Farmers of America. She showed off her sheep.
and received the Reserve Grand Champion U Award in 2010. Let's Google that. U was a female. E-U-W. E-W-E. E-W-E-U. E-W. What are you doing? I'm raising ewes. I was an E-U-W.
She's also involved in basketball. She was a sophomore, but a starter on the varsity team. Involved in track and cross country, where she received all area honors. She's active in student council, the academic team, the 4-H team leadership, camp counselor. She's in the National Honor Society. Basically, every accomplishment and thing that you could do as a sophomore in high school, she's done. And she just competed in the Miss Velma Alma pageant. Oh, she's pretty and has a bunch of certificates. And she's like six feet tall, too. Wow. She's like a six-foot-tall blonde girl, very pretty young lady.
smart and very, you know, driven. So she arrives at the TP totem and puts her cup to the fountain to get some soda here. Now, while this is going on, she's filling up the cup. Here comes Miles. Now, Miles has realized, I think, that his soft approach, as we'll put it, doesn't work. Coming over, you want to step into the back room. He's tried a bunch of times and nobody's biting here. So instead of all of that, he just tackles her. He just tackles this poor young lady here. He starts, basically tackles her and gets her in a chokehold and starts choking her. Starts choking her out. MMA style.
Then he drags her into the store stock room. I guess so no one coming into the store can see. Now, like we said, she's like a six foot tall basketball player. She's athletic. Sure. She's not going down without a fight at all. And she's tough. And she's in good shape. Real good shape. Yeah. So once inside the stock room, she realized, oh shit, I'm in trouble. And she fought. I mean, you can, we'll talk about it, but she fought hard for this against him. He repeatedly hit her and punched her. And, you know, he's just got, got size on her and got weight on her and age and everything else. He beats her brutally, her head, face, neck and chest.
dragged her across the room, causing her head to bounce off the floor, stomped her head, neck, arm, and upper back with his shoe until she died. Why? Just beat and stomped her because she fought back. Right. You know, she didn't want to be raped by some creep in a convenience store, so that deserves to be killed, obviously. What a fucking horrible thing to happen. It's fucking disgusting. It's horrifying. Blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. We'll talk about that, too, what happened to her. Now, he then put a bag around her head.
and put her body inside a shopping cart. So he put her in a shopping cart and was like, well, people notice that, and then put a bag on her head and was like, perfect, no one will know the difference. That's it? That's what he did, and pushed it out to her car, which is in the parking lot. He put her body in the back seat.
And then he went inside, got some peanut butter, sunflower seeds, a toothbrush, some rubbing alcohol, and some razors from the store shelves and put them in the car as well. Then he drove her car with her in it to a secluded area on his grandparents' land where he lives. Took her home with him. This is wild. And he has enough supplies for seven hours. He's got enough supplies for two days. Get some sunflower seeds and peanut butter. He'll be fine. So he takes her there. He completely undresses her from the waist down.
pulls her jacket, tank top, and sports bra up until she's fully exposed on top as well. You know, because why give this person any dignity after you've already done all this to her? Then he drags her body to a muddy spot in the field and partially covers it with basically a shovel full of dirt. Like, she's just sitting there. He took, like, a shovel full of dirt and went, well, there's that, and sprinkled some leaves on her and was like, good enough, and walked away. Just to look at her? Yep. You could see her from anywhere. But, I mean, he did all of this just to look at her and then just walked... That's a...
crazy, non-beneficial crime. That's insane. I have to assume that he was at least, that he was masturbating at some point. At some point, he's got to be doing something for himself. This is the least gratification ever. Yeah, and I don't know why this would be attractive to him, but he's a disgusting person at this point. So then he went inside his grandparents' home, put a clean shirt over the top of the shirt he was wearing. Didn't take that one off, the one covered in blood and all. Just masked it. Put that on, took some additional items for his trip because he's going to go to California right now to become an MMA fighter.
He took boots, clothes, hydrogen peroxide, and his wallet. So now he's got hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol. Wow. If he gets any cuts, boy, he is covered. He's going to be clean. Now, his grandfather, Stanley Bench, noticed, why the fuck are you home from work so early? You're not supposed to be home yet. So he asked him, did you quit or get fired? Which one is it? To which he responded, quote, yes.
Bravo, sir. You idiot. Well done, Tom. Oh, you stupid idiot. So he then informed his grandfather that he was leaving and he went outside and then washed himself in the water spigot like one does before they go on a trip. In the hose. That's what I do. Whenever we go on the road, before I go to the airport, I'm like, hold on a minute and then I got to go like run to the hose and just make sure. Get your yard bath. Yeah, just wash myself off real quick. When he was done, he stuck his head back inside the door and declared, Pa, I love you. And his grandpa replied, I love you too. Be careful out there and don't get hurt. And he said, okay. And he left. So.
Then you get Tammy Wilkerson at 815 seeing a pool of blood. The cops going, oh, my God, this poor clerk must have been murdered in here and dragged away. And then this young girl, too. What happened? Oh, my goodness. So they end up also getting DNA samples from the pool of blood in the storeroom. While this is going on, Braley's family is searching for her. Right. And then they contacted law enforcement after about an hour when they couldn't find her. So they're looking for Miles as well now because they're starting to put all this together. Right. Deputy David Martin goes over to the grandparents' house to check on Miles to make sure maybe Miles.
is there with a head wound and somebody beat him up and he doesn't know. Maybe he's unrelated altogether. Yes. They have to make sure that the clerk is not, hasn't been mauled and hurt first, obviously. Because if he isn't, he's definitely a suspect in the other things. Certainly, yeah. So they go to check on him. Now, they also bring dogs over. Oh. And by the use of dogs, they discover Braley's nude body in a field barely covered. That was easy. Yeah. They need the dogs because it's dark out. Other than that, they don't need it at all. So they put out a bolo for her car because they know she had a car.
Shortly after that, Deputy Quentin Short of the Custer County Sheriff's Department observed the vehicle, Henry's vehicle, Henry's vehicle heading west on I-40, which is how you get to California. And it's rolling. It's going. He stops the car and approaches it on foot and observed, gets there and observes in plain sight a shitload of blood all over the backseat. Just tons of blood all over the backseat. He sees, obviously, Miles is in the driver's seat and he says, you need to get the fuck out of the car here. Stolen car, full of blood guy. So he steps out of the car, closes the door behind him and then says, I wasn't driving this car.
Literally said, I wasn't driving this car after getting out from behind the driver's seat where there's no other people in the car, mind you. And it was driving and he got pulled over. I wasn't driving this car. I was traveling in this person's vehicle. Yeah. Can you imagine how frustrating that would have to be? We're going to start with this already. That would be at least something. He just said, wasn't me. Uh-huh. Even though you just stopped me and I stepped out of the vehicle and no one else is here. I saw you. I wasn't the one driving it. Okay. Magic now, he's saying, basically. So the officer actually had to take a step back because he was so like, no one's that brazenly full of shit. So he said, then whose vehicle is it?
To which this fucking idiot replies, quote, I think I fucked up. I may have killed somebody. Oh, my God. Huh? What's that now? Yeah. OK. So then he also observed at this point that Miles has blood on his clothes, which is a good sign. He takes him into custody, pulls him on in here. He also notices he has blood on his shirt, shoes and socks, has dirt on his face, on the shoulder of his shirt as well. There's a mixture of blood and dirt on the bottom of his shoes and that his hands are red and swollen. Doesn't look good.
Now, Officer Kendall Brown here is booking him into the Custer County Jail while he's gathering the information. He's just name, address. They got to get all the preliminary shit. All the shit he asked that girl. Yeah, exactly. So what's your name? Who's your daddy? So yeah, he's got to do all that. So when he's talking to him, this is before the detectives come in. They get all the preliminary stuff and the detectives come in fresh. So while he's doing this, Miles just spontaneously said, I think I might have messed up. I think I may have killed somebody.
Then he also says that I may have blacked out at one point. And he also said, I think Stevens County is going to come get me. Probably. That's where that is. Now, her and Braley Henry's injuries are extensive blunt force trauma to the head, face, scalp, neck and upper torso, which resulted in internal bleeding. Also had bruises on her legs, arms and hands. Sufficient pressure had been applied to her neck to cause the fracture of the.
No, the cricoid cartilage. Cricoid? C-R-I-C-O-I-D. What the fuck is that? Patiki in both eyes, bleeding in the lining of her airways. They said that these injuries couldn't be explained by a single impact, unless she fell out of a plane or something. Right. This is just sustained beating and strangling. Yep. She had pattern injuries on her head, neck, arm, and upper back, which were consistent with the bottom of Miles' shoes.
Stomped her to death. Scumbag. Yeah, it's horrifying. It was so significant she had bruising behind her sternum and bleeding in the lining of her airways. She suffered a traumatic brain injury from the trauma to her head. They said that she definitely fought back in an effort to save her own life because we find out that Miles has a bruise on his elbow and a bite mark on his arm where she fought back. She was fucking fighting with nails and teeth and everything she had, this poor kid. Jesus. They noticed the bruises on her right forearm were defensive in nature as well, and she had also a broken toenail.
So they said they could not determine exactly at what point she became unconscious, but they didn't see any evidence that she was immediately rendered unconscious. She knew it was happening. It's fucking horrible. They said the great majority of her injuries would have happened when she was still alive, including being stomped in the throat. She had injuries to both inside and the outside of her head, consistent with being dragged across the floor while still alive and conscious. They said that the blood on her face indicated she was conscious after the attack on her torso and that she coughed up blood from her nose and mouth. He said that she essentially suffocated in her own blood. Yeah, all because he couldn't learn how to pick up girls. Yeah, because he couldn't figure it out. Or he couldn't figure out, hey.
Find someone that's not quite as attractive as you'd like them to be. Maybe a little bit older, something like that. Maybe you'd have a chance. Hot 16-year-olds, probably not stupid. You're 21 anyway. You shouldn't be. You shouldn't be talking to these girls anyway. But the medical examiner said instead of breathing air, she was breathing blood. Jesus. So back at the station here, they're still having a chit-chat, him and Officer Brown here. He has some, there's some exchange here that's captured by the jail recording system. They're asking him the questions, height, weight, eye color, place of birth.
He said out of nowhere, they said, do you have any allergies to any medications? And he said, I've been losing my voice lately. And the cop said, sick or something with cold or flu? Because he's got to put that on the forum for intake. And he said, I got a problem. I know I did something wrong. I just blacked out. Now, the cop said, quote, dude, I don't have nothing to do with anything like that. Yeah. I'm your height and weight guy. I don't know shit about this. I'm not the guy to tell about your crimes. I'm allergy pills guy. Not even that. He's write down what you do guy. And then he'll hand that to a nurse. We'll get him some allergy pills. He doesn't do anything.
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So he said, I know. And then he said, it's bad. This is Miles talking. So then he asked where he is. And he was in Arapaho in Custer County. And he said, if they believe that I don't know where I am, they might believe that I was crazy. You're going to conspire with the check-in guy? Yeah, that's what he's going to do. So the guy's like, all right. Concierge cop, help me with my defense. Please. He's asking him more questions. Are you addicted to any drugs, alcohol that would claim you to have, that you maybe would have withdrawal symptoms while you're here? Do you have any identifying tattoos? And he says, I do have a tattoo of PXSPEC on his left arm.
which is a military thing. So the officer correctly recognized it as military and then Miles became very talkative because they both been in the military. So much so that Officer Brown was unable to complete the booking process and was forced to wait until the arresting officers released him from the back of the room so he could bring him up to the front and go over the information and enter it into the computer. He just talked his ear off. So during this, Brown is answering questions and generally chatting with him about military and guns. After a time, both of them fell silent for a second as you get a lull in the conversation and he just, Miles just said, quote, I think I may have killed somebody.
And Brown said, dude, don't tell me that. At least I don't want to know. Don't tell me. Dude, don't tell me. He goes, ah, man, you know, I really want to do that. Stop telling me things. Yeah. So at that point, they returned to the questions. He asked the cop, are you a jailer? And he said, have you seen any interesting characters? And the cop said, interesting, no, crazy, yes. And they talked about some crazy people in the jail, to which he said then that the military required psych evaluations, this is Miles, and that, quote, the dude in the straitjacket's usually the one screaming that he's not crazy. And then he said, we all have to be a little crazy to keep from going insane, right?
What? Right there, buddy. Yeah, that's just some, that's some shit that people say on the job set. We all got to be a little crazy, keep from going insane. Know what I mean? All right, then. And then they walk away and go back to doing their job. It's just like a throwaway line. But he means it. He does, yeah. He means it. At one point, he said, is there a detective or someone I could talk to? And Brown said, I don't know. Maybe. I just filled this paper out. That's my job. Fill that out. This is all they'll give me the responsibility of. They barely give me a gun. Yeah. He said he asked about bondsmen and how the bonds work and said, could you write down bondsmen's numbers? And the guy's like, I don't think you're going to be in this county very long. So.
I don't know. Then he said, if they believe that I don't know where I am, then they might think I was crazy, right? And that's when he said, I don't know. Fucking whatever. Then he said, do you think I'll make bond at all? So the cop says, I have no idea, dude. I don't even know. I don't know if you even have charges or are going to have some charges. I don't have a clue. Yeah. So Miles said, I think I murdered someone. The officer in the car mentioned manslaughter. Isn't manslaughter murder?
Is that a thing? So at this point, Brown advises him, look, I can't tell you that. I can't explain anything to you. I'm a jailer. He said, quote, I don't know anything about the law. I simply book people into the jail. That's literally all I do. You're asking the wrong cat right now. He said, you go through the drive through. Maybe they'll know. Yeah. And that's what he said. I think Stevens County is going to come get me.
And that's when he said, I thought he blacked out. And then Miles said, since I blacked out, do you think I should go for an insanity plea or what? Then Brown says, I can't give you any legal opinions whatsoever. Dude, outside of this form, I have no job. Understand? This is it. This and I'll talk to you about Fort Bragg. That's all I got. So then they search his body. While they're searching him, he asked if Oklahoma had the death penalty. He's answered that they do under certain circumstances. He said, well, I need death or to be locked away in the big house then, I guess.
You know, that's what it is. The DNA, by the way, shows that it is Braley Henry's DNA in the pool of blood in there. The chances of a match with anyone else's DNA are one in 61.8 quadrillion, which is more people than will ever live on the earth till the sun burns out. June 12th, 2012, there's a big giant funeral, hundreds of people, basically the entire town shows up for it. They have it at the high school gym.
It's horrible. It's fucking horrible. Yeah. The principal says that lots of sadness in a small town like this, knowing the family and knowing the extended family and children that go to school here. He said, unbelievable. This doesn't happen in my town. He said she walks down the hall and I'm always aggravating and calling her tall girl because she's a whole lot taller than me. But that doesn't have to be very tall. But I'm guessing somewhere around six foot. She smiles all the time. You saw a picture of her and that's just what she looks like all the time. Then they also down the road a little bit. They name the school, the street that goes.
into the school, they name that Braley's Way, which is nice. Now, awaiting trial, he attempts to escape jail. What is he doing? He escaped a restraint chair, which means he was acting fucking crazy if they put him in that number one. And they said he was placed in a restraint chair because he rammed his head into a wall, escaped from the chair and into a different part of the jail, took off his orange jail uniform, put on a trustee's green uniform and use that uniform to gain entry into other areas of the jail. Oh, Jesus.
They said that he used the trustee's clothing to make his way toward the exit of the jail, which is crazy. As jail employees looked for him, he ducked into a holding cell near the jail's exit. He thought maybe he could just bounce right out there. They found him hiding in the cell and asked him what he was doing. And he said, I was trying to get out, trying to escape.
They said, what the fuck are you doing? What's the point of all this? And he said, quote, it was worth a try. Fuck it. That's OK. He wants to change a venue. They don't give him one. Yeah. He also says that he shouldn't be any of the statements shouldn't be used against him because he wasn't properly Mirandized. And they said you weren't even being interrogated at all. His lawyer said that because he doesn't even know what manslaughter is. This is a gray area here because technically he is in custody. He's not free to leave.
Right. So you should understand that he, anything he says is going to be used, but well, no, they should Mirandize him. He sits down in that room, but shouldn't he know that as soon as, I mean, I guess you got to, he doesn't know shit. Yeah. He doesn't know anything. He doesn't know anything. No, but if you put him in a room that he's not allowed to leave, I think he should be Mirandized for anything. And that's just for the cops protection to make sure they can use the shit that he says in case it blurts out crazy shit. Like I think I killed someone. Right. You know, stuff like that. Yeah. It's pretty wild. But they said volunteered statements are not barred by the fifth amendment and their admissibility is not affected.
by holding someone like that. He was not being interrogated, they said. That's a real gray area. They said these were routine booking questions. That is the exemption from Miranda's coverage. Literally, the Supreme Court recognized the exemption of routine booking questions. If someone works out from there. If you start saying shit, that's on you, man. Yep. So his trial defense is insanity. He's doing the insanity defense. I'm crazy. His cousin Clayton here says that he was able to engage in meaningful conversation as they discussed their future plans together for two hours that day, and he didn't see anything wrong with him on that day. But then, when they do cross-examination on him, I guess,
Oh, no, the defense called him. He was called as both a defense and a prosecution witness, this guy. He said he was talking about things that bothered him in his room like a demon. Miles was talking about a demon the whole time. Oh, OK. Yeah. He said he's got some demon stuff and that he was afraid to go to the doctor because he was feared he'd be committed because he knew that he had a chip in his brain like Universal Soldier. Yeah. Like a science project. The Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Yeah, obviously. And also that there was a man and a woman from the Navy trying to hunt and kill him because he knew too much from what he had done in the military, which was not even get through boot camp. Yeah.
Which is interesting. Okay. Now, they have different defense people here going back and forth. They have a defense shrink. The prosecution shrink says he's malingering and he's fine. The defense shrink says he's schizophrenic. We don't give state secrets to guys in boot camp. Who are only in special education boot camp. Who can't finish special education boot camp. So the grandparents have different things. Now, the grandfather, he says that.
Recently, Miles has began mumbling to himself, had trouble sleeping and stayed up all night, banged on his bedroom wall and spoke in two different voices, stopped showering and grooming, which is always what the ladies are looking for, indicated that he had advised that he had an implant in his brain like the Manchurian candidate. That's an older reference now. He's a real cinephile, James. He's a cinephile, he is. He's making Kurosawa references pretty soon. A man and a woman from the Navy were after him. They came into the store trying to kill him, and he was going to have to do something about them if they didn't stop.
His mother, his mother or his grandmother initially indicated that he lived in a world of make believe, thought he had seen spirits, was sometimes depressed and moody, did not like authority, was easily angered. He's just a dick and believed he was smarter than everyone else, which the world should have put him should have put that in the correct place for a long time ago. It's amazing. He has not been humbled yet. Wow. So, yeah, she said she always thought of him as, quote, a little mental.
Here. She said he would go to sleep. He's irrational. Wouldn't sleep for four or five days. Hit her bedroom wall all night. Didn't shower or groom himself. Claimed that he was Jason Bourne or a spy. So he's Manchurian candidate, universal soldier, and Jason Bourne. All wrapped up in a while. Some of the best ones, James. Let's tell it. He's a badass. He claimed he had a chip in his head and also repeatedly came into a room at night complaining he was scared. He said he saw heads coming out of his closet after him and an apparition of a little girl in a white dress and a man and a woman on these occasions as well. Okay. Now. So, like I said, they said that he's fine. The state says he's fine, basically.
He's quoting movies. He's just quoting movies. They also, during the defense, they say, look at how he closes out the cash register. He records goofy transactions and he left money in the register. If he was running away, killing and running, why didn't he steal all the money? He made a nonsensical joke that somebody witnessed. So they said, that's the reason he's crazy. He couldn't get simple pizza orders right because there's a Hunt Brothers pizza in there. And he made very little effort to hide what happened in the store. He's crazy. He said, you can't just go with criminals are stupid. That didn't work. Miles Bench was in a psychotic break.
He doesn't even know what direction he's going in. It's crazy. I don't even have the words for it. It's insane. That's the words. That's the words. It's insane. So the prosecution says our prisons are full of stupid people. If they weren't stupid, they wouldn't be criminals. Right. They get away with it. They get away with it probably or know enough not to do it in the first place. The verdict comes in. It's either five men and five or seven men and five women or seven women and five men. I've seen it three different places. Seven and five, two hours of deliberation and guilty of first degree murder. Yeah. Yeah. During sentencing, they emphasize the especially heinous, atrocious and cruel nature of this. And they're looking for the death penalty. Yeah.
Now, a social worker testified that something odd must have been going on with Miles to act the way he did because it's not indicative of the Miles that he knew. No. Mitigating factors, no prior felony convictions, his capacity to appreciate the criminality of his acts. He was under the influence of a mental disturbance, acted under the circumstances which tended to justify excuse or reduce the crime. He's likely to be rehabilitated, fully cooperated with police. He's only 23 years old, was diagnosed with a learning disability, was bullied, teased, had a negative emotional and family history, had suicidal thoughts when he was 13 years old, was physically and verbally abused as a child.
wanted to serve in the Navy, but was unable to complete the requirements. And he was presented for mental health treatment and was denied. Yeah, but he told the cops, if I claim I'm insane, like he's already crafting a defense. He knows right from wrong. And the judge says, you, sir, may fuck off death penalty.
Oh, boy. Take that, Miles. October 2018, he appeals saying his Miranda was violated, improper prosecution statements, all this different type of shit. They also and he's not a continued threat to society. The Criminal Court of Appeals rejects all his arguments saying you are a continued threat to society. Good Lord. In 2022, though, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case McGirt versus Oklahoma in a 5-4 decision, the court held that much of eastern Oklahoma, including lands of the, quote, five civilized tribes, that's what they were called, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole.
Remains Native American reservation land for criminal jurisdiction purposes. They're saying he is 164th Choctaw and is a member actually of the Choctaw Nation because of that. So this shouldn't be going down. Now, Braley was 31 128th. No shit. Indian blood. So Choctaw Nation as well. So why not? So what the fuck? You know what I mean? Anyway, so May 2021, our Oklahoma Court of Appeals overturns his conviction, citing that decision based on that. But.
Not so fast, the Oklahoma Court of Appeals withdrew its May decision after the Supreme Court clarified that McGirt could not be applied retroactively to cases that were already finalized. Oh, that was before this. From now on, it's fine. Yeah, what you did before, keep on keeping on, dickface. So Braley's mom said it was heart-wrenching for our family. I'm so thankful this decision was handed down. She called it a major step toward justice and all of that. So currently, he is in state custody at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAllister with his conviction and death sentence reinstated. However, there is possibility of federal appeals that he can make as well.
So the U.S. Attorney's Office has charged him federally with kidnapping resulting in a death. So that could lead to a federal trial if the state conviction is overturned again. Then he can do Fed time. Yep. All right. And there's also, very quickly, the Braley Project. Thebraleyproject.org. Sure. And they say here, in honor of our daughter, we started the Braley Ray Henry Memorial Scholarship Fund, which awards scholarships to students who are leaders in their school and involved in sports and organizations that Braley loved. In order to continue to fund these scholarships, we started the Braley Ray Henry Memorial Golf Tournament in 2015. It's a 501, you know.
C3 deal. So yeah, it's a good deal. So if you ever want to give some money to something nice, that's a nice thing to do. Poor Braley. She did nothing wrong but be a great person and get fucking murdered for trying to get Dr. Pepper. There you go. Why would we both say Dr. Pepper? I don't know, but that's that. I assume that's what she liked. That's probably South Oklahoma. So there you go, everybody. There is Velma, Oklahoma.
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