S1, E8: One Devil From Murder

Michael Blagg Pod – Crimedocumentary.com/ Reddit/ TV doc called “Downloading the Devil”/ http://charleyproject.org/case/abby-jo-blagg

Jennifer, 32, and her 6 year old daughter, Abby went missing from their Grand Junction home on On Nov. 13, 2001. 38 year old Michael Blagg (the husband to Jennifer, and father to Abby ) called 911 and said when he returned home from work, he found the backdoor ajar and a jewelry box thrown on the floor of the master bedroom along with papers. There was a large splatter of blood on his wife’s side of the bed. Michael said when he left for work at 6 a.m., Jennifer and Abby were still in bed, and when he returned home at 4:20 p.m., they were gone. He had called several times that day to check up on his family with no answer. Leaving upbeat messages like: “Hello, my beautiful bride. I hope you’re out and about doing all kinds of cool and nifty things.” At first, townsfolk thought Abby was kidnapped by strangers and the Blaggs’ super clean reputation in their evangelical world kept investigators guessing. The family led prayer meetings and consulted God for guidance every day. Michael was a decorated veteran, Jennifer a homemaker. Grand Junction put their special crimes unit on the case – a group of highly trained investigators who tend to be good at getting to the truth. At first, they wondered if there was a serial rapist or killer that was passing through the area since that has happened in the past. They looked at all prior kidnapping victims throughout the US even. While police canvassed the neighborhood and searched nearby rugged areas for Jennifer and Abby, they waited in vain for ransom demands that never came. Meanwhile, the forensics team got to work on the house where Jennifer and Abby were last known to be. The first thing they noticed were both the front door and the rear door of the house were open so they fingerprinted those doors in case one was touched by the perpetrator. There was no signs of a struggle and no high velocity blood splatter like would be seen from a gun shot wound. There also wasn’t any cast-off blood like would happen with being struck with an object. Oddly, the blood ends at the bed. Not a single drop is found anywhere else in the house, but in the garage, they found blood on the driver’s side handle of the family mini van and a bit on the steering wheel. Some drops were also found on the sliding door on the passenger side, but at this point, they don’t know who’s blood they’ve found. 48 hours after the incident, there’s still no answers. The police search databases for known child molesters and ex-cons in the area and widened their physical search area. Now searching on horseback and even by boat. They call Michael in for a more detailed interview and they have him recount his day over and over. He says he did see the back door open when he came home and the bed wasn’t made which he said Jennifer always did so he knew something was off. The team starts searching through Jennifer’s belongings to see if she could have possibly met someone else and had taken little Abby and left with him. They found she really didn’t have any close friends in Grand Junction and mostly kept to herself. But then they turn up something they think is a huge bomb shell. There’s a paperback book that was in the living room on top of the TV. On page 55, Jennifer had written in the margins of the book. She wrote that she was sick so she had skipped church and spent the morning with Stanley instead. She said she had an incredible prayer time with him and she was giving him the keys to her life. She even dated it. It was the day before her disappearance. The detectives question friends, family and church members, but this Stanley guy remains a mystery. Meanwhile, the blood results come back from the Blagg home and it all comes back to Jennifer. The fingerprints came back to household family members as well, so that’s no help. They try to determine if the amount of blood found could tell them if Jennifer was indeed dead. Examiners determine it’s a pretty decent amount and there was a good chance she was dead. They still need a suspect to hone in on and they’re desperate to find out who Stanley is. They search Michael’s work computer but find no evidence of an affair on his part, but it does reveal a shocking new clue. An unsent email from Michael to Jennifer dated the day before the attack. It basically says he’s sorry they had ruined the day with their argument and he’s sorry he could have “given the devil a foothold.” So they decide to take a closer look at Michael’s story. The investigator started noticing some oddities. Like, when Michael called 911, he had called immediately upon finding a mess in the bedroom but hadn’t searched the rest of the home for his family. While on the phone, the dispatcher basically had to tell him to go look for his daughter in her room. She wasn’t in there and her school clothes were still laid out for the day. Then they review the messages he left that day on the family voicemail. Initially, they sound all sugary sweet. He kept calling and sounding more anxious as he hasn’t heard back from them. However, the investigators note that Grand Junction isn’t that big. If he was so worried, why didn’t he drive the 8 minutes across town to check on them. After all, he was the manager at his work. This is the point at when he goes from victim to suspect in the cops minds. They search the family computer and find a secret cache of over 860 pornographic photos. Michael’s photo collection reveals it was particularly focused on female domination. They started to connect this with the apparent control Michael had over Jennifer. It seemed as if they didn’t associate with anyone outside of their family and church. It’s obvious Michael is obsessed with making sure they portray themselves in the best light to the outside world. After searching frantically for the mystery man from earlier, they find out he’s Dr. Charles Stanley, a reverend with a TV show. The episode she had watched the day she was sick, the day before her disappearance, was called, “the keys to peace.” In his message, Stanley strongly condemned porn which makes investigators wonder if Michael’s porn addiction is what sparked the couple’s fight. They question Michael about the argument, but he plays it down, saying it was because a recruiter had met with him about a possible job and Jennifer was angry he hadn’t consulted with her about it first. He also claimed the porn was actually research to keep the marriage fresh. The cops don’t buy it but so far, they can’t prove he harmed his family, especially with no bodies. The only thing left to do was watch and wait. Investigators conducted a covert surveillance on Michael. In December 2001 he moved out of the family home. A month later, investigators see hi stealing from his worksite. He was caught stealing a paper shredder and a table. They bring him in for questioning and he denied the theft for HOURS. They upped the pressure on him, using Bible verses even but he’s a tough nut to crack. One investigator who was also ex-military noticed Michael would completely change his personality when talking about anything military related. Apparently he had gone through SERE training which stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. With this training, they blindfold you, drop you off in the middle of nowhere and try to hunt you down like you’re in war. It teaches the skills necessary to survive and evade capture, and if captured, resist interrogation and know how to escape. Eventually, after 8 hours of interrogation, he asks a strange question. “What’s the difference between 1st degree and 2nd degree murder?” Police felt like he was finally thinking about his choices and about to tell them what happened. But, after 10 hours of questioning, it was like he flipped a switch and suddenly tells them he’s done. Legally, they had to release him, so they did. The next day, they go to meet with Michael at his apartment for a scheduled meeting with him to discuss the stolen goods. He doesn’t answer the door and after several attempts to get a hold of him, they get the building super to let them in where they come upon a shocking site. COMMERCIAL BREAK? They enter the Michael’s living space which smells like car exhaust. They go into the bathroom, Michael is in the bathtub and his wrists had been cut but he was still alive. There looked like there was tons of blood in the water so cops tried to get him to give what they call a “dying declaration” of what had happened to Jennifer and Abby but he still denied he did anything. But, not everyone buys his suicide attempt. Police think he was vying for public sympathy because it turns out the wounds on his wrists are very superficial and wouldn’t have resulted in death. They still don’t have enough evidence against Michael and they need to find the bodies so 5 months later, they organize a county wide search team that was the largest in state history with over 2000 volunteers searching by foot, horseback and helicopter. In 10 days they searched 100’s of square miles but still found nothing. But, they discover from interviewing Michael’s work collegues that on the day of his family’s disappearance, Michael did something out of the ordinary. They saw Michael pushing a pallet jack with two large-sized cardboard boxes on it on the day he reported Jennifer and Abby as missing. The witness stated that Michael discarded the items on the loading dock near Ametek's trash compactor. Michael refused an offer of assistance with the boxes, which was uncharacteristic of his behavior. So investigators decide to search the landfill. At first, the landfill people didn’t think the search was even feasible with the size and scope of area that would have to be dug through but police wouldn’t take no for an answer. They narrowed the search area to a 200 x 300 x 30 feet deep area with over 800,000 cubic feet of garbage. The next step was doing what they called, “potholing” where they would have an excavator dig down vertically and they would pick out newspapers in that spot and do this over and over until they came across newspapers near the timing of the Blagg’s disappearance. For 2 weeks, they continued digging without finding anything, in an area of Colorado that often gets into the 100’s during the summer months which is when they’re digging. They keep going anyway and on day 16, the bucket comes up and everyone stops dead in their tracks when they see a leg hanging out of the bucket. Wrapped in a tent is a woman’s decaying body. It was identified through a dental comparison as Jennifer Blagg. The cause of death was a gun shot to the front of her head. She was most likely killed in her sleep because she was still dressed in her pajamas, she still had her retainer in her mouth and her eyes were closed. They had mapped where all of Ametek Dixson’s waste was in the landfill and by the items with Jennifer, they could prove she was thrown away with Ametek Dixon’s waste. That same day, a warrant is issued for Michael for Murder in the first degree. He’s arrested the next day. For the next 52 days, investigators continue searching through hundreds of tons of trash but they never come across Abby. They finally gave up their search, but they still believe she’s there somewhere. At trial, prosecutors say Jennifer had planned on leaving Michael because of his porn addiction but rather than deal with the public shame and expulsion from his church, he killed Jennifer instead. Michael is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. He hasn’t been charged with little Abby’s murder since they haven’t found her body and none of Abby's blood could be found anywhere, either in the van or in the house. I remember hearing a lot of theories that Michael possibly sent Abby away with family but there’s been no sightings or anything of her. Today, she would be 25 years old. http://charleyproject.org/case/abby-jo-blagg