'Unlocking the Truth' Recap: Episode 7 - Was Michael Politte's Case Just Solved?

This episode of Unlocking the Truth returns again to Byron Case in order to analyze Kelly Moffett's statements. It also looks at the physical evidence against Michael Politte.

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Unlocking the Truth: Byron Case

The Unlocking the Truth starts the episode by meeting with a relative of Anastasia, the woman who is killed in this case. They find out that Anastasia was popular, and she had moved in with Justin just before graduation.

She liked that he was trying to be something, with a car, apartment and college plans. But eventually Anastasia started acting strange and depressed.

The relative says that Byron was strange, but she didn't think he was the kind of person who would kill somebody. But she believes Kelly's version of events.

Next, the Unlocking the Truth team brings in a forensic linguist. The forensic linguist looks at Kelly's statements to the police.

He tells the team that Kelly's 1997 statements match Byron's very closely, but the 2000 statement raises red flags. Within the 2000 statement there are bunch of internal contradictions.

The forensic linguist also listened to the audio interview of Kelly that was done in 2000. Kelly, in the audio, sounds uncertain and appears to use speech props like "um" a lot.

Watch the team try to decode Kelly's audio:

To the forensic linguist, this audio raises a bunch of red flags, so the Unlocking the Truth team starts to look into the timeline themselves.

The Unlocking the Truth team meets with the former owner of a Dairy Queen who saw the teenagers on the night of the murder.

They want to see if his times match those of Kelly's.

Kelly had said that the killings occurred at dusk, but the Dairy Queen owner says that he saw the teenagers after dark (after leaving the Dairy Queen was when the murder was said to have happened).

The team then meets with a man who worked at the first cemetery the teenagers went to. The man tells the Unlocking the Truth team that he saw the teenagers around 9 PM, well after dark.

Unlocking the Truth: Michael Politte

Next, the Unlocking the Truth returns to the case of Michael Politte.

They go to visit someone named Tina, who was a friend of Michael's mother (Rita). The friend tells the Unlocking the Truth team that she thinks that Michael was guilty.

She says that his relationship with his mother had gone sour after her divorce.

She also talks about how he was known to have tried to start fires in the past. But Tina thinks that Michael's dad was behind the murder - he just got Michael to do it.

In order to verify the fire claim, the Unlocking the Truth team goes to meet Rita's ex-boyfriend, who had testified about Michael's obsession with fire.

He tells the team that Michael often misbehaved, and he had seen Michael starting fires in the past

But the team feels that the ex-boyfriend's testimony isn't particularly relevant to the case. They think that the prosecutor used that testimony incorrectly in order to implicate Michael.

One of the most important pieces of evidence in the case was that the accelerant used in the fire that killed Rita was found by a dog on Michael's shoes.

So the Unlocking the Truth team brings in an expert on accelerants.

The expert says that the original investigator wouldn't have been able to tell what started the fire without taking it to a lab.

He also says that some of the chemicals used to make Michael's shoes were the same chemicals that the dog was trained to sniff. He concludes that there is no physical evidence that links Michael to the fire.

Ryan decides to go to meet with Michael in prison. He asks Michael about Johnny Politte, his dad's relative. Michael tells Ryan that his dad didn't help him it all during the questioning. He didn't care.

At the end of the episode, the Unlocking the Truth team meets with Michael's lawyers. Michael's lawyers decide to file a petition with the court for a retrial of the case. They all agree that Michael Politte is innocent.