This is not too mundane nor pointless, but it is an important topic. Sorry this is long, it’s actually a short version, if anyboody wants more facts just ask.
A Burmese young man was convicted in Utah of killing a small child.
This occured just 15 or so blocks and less than 2 years after a similar murder of a small child.
There were five people living in the apartmnt where the body was found.
The accused, Esar Met, lived in the basement and is a Burmese Muslim. He was friendly with the child, a Burmese Karen.
The four roommates lived in the upper apartment and were openly hostile to him. They refered to him as ‘a bad guy’ and ‘a Muslim’ when initially questioned. They are the same ethnic group as the child but were not friendly with the child and gave conflicting accounts of whether they knew the child.
The interviews of the four roommates seem to contain red flags that should have been investigated, but for unknown reasons they were each released shortly after being interviewed.
Esar Met was interviewed in quite a different manner and was eventually given the option of either confessing to killing the child accidentally or confessing to killing the child deliberately. During the interview he is repeatedly told that he has to ‘tell the truth’ and ‘stop lying’, and eventually he does agree to ‘tell the truth’ and ‘confess’.
However none of the things he says in the confession remotely resemble anything about the crime, with the exception of him saying he threw the child’s shoes in the bathroom. There was a photo of the shoes in the bathroom that he may have been shown before the interview, but that is speculation. Also, he first said that the shoes were near the entrance to the apartment, to which an FBI agent said “no, no, no”, and it’s possible he just guessed where they were. Among all his guesses about what transpired, that is the only one that matched the evidence.
The body was found in the downstairs area where he lived, but the area was not seperated from the apartment by a locked door, and the roommates stored DVDs and their bicycles in the area where the child was killed.
Here is a summary of the evidence.
- The interview
The public was immediately told that he had ‘confessed’, and was never told about problems with the confession other than translation and Miranda issues. In other words the public was led to believe the confession was problematic for legalistic reasons but otherwise valid.
The confession video itself, and transcript, were kept secret, suppressed and not available for outside examination until it was put online in 2014.
Interview video YouTube? v=cNT7WMXVoZI
Translation 1 01:00T: မင္းနာမည္ ေမးေနတယ္ ဘယ္သူလဲတဲ့What’s your name? Who are you?0 - Pastebin.com
Translation 2 01:00Translator (What’s your name?)01:04Samar (Samar) [Can't be heard clea - Pastebin.com
Here is part of the exchange right before he agrees to ‘tell the truth and confess’.
~ FBI agent "We know it was you. Your footprint is next to her body. Don’t lie to me.
~ FBI agent “Your footprint. It was right next to her dead body. We know you had her down the basement.”
~ FBI agent “Her blood is on your bed…”
~ FBI agent “Her blood is on the wall.”
~ Salt Lake “City detective Was it an accident or did you plan this?”
~ Translator “Now, what he wants to know is if it was an accident or if you planned it. Was it an accident or did you plan it?”
~ FBI agent “Say it again!”
~ Translator “Now, what he wants to know is if it was an accident or if you planned it. Was it an accident or did you plan it?”
~ Salt Lake City detective “because we can understand it if it was an accident.”
~ Translator “But from what they understand, it was an accident.”
~ Salt Lake City detective “If it wasn’t an accident, you must have planned to do this.”
~ Salt Lake City detective “So, was it an accident or did you plan this?”
~ Translator "What they want to know is “Was it an accident or did you plan this?” They want to know the answer. Which one is it? “Was it an accident or did you do it intentionally?”
~ Salt Lake City detective “So, which is it? Was it an accident or did you plan this?” …
~ Salt Lake City detective “Accident or you planned it?”
~ Translator “Answer him.”
…
A person who is not familiar with false confessions may perceive the interview as a genuine confession, but in fact it is a classic false confession.
“The third type of false confession is in some ways… We called it internalized false confessions. These are instances where an innocent person denying any involvement is put through a series of interrogation tactics and ultimately comes out not only willing to sign a confession as an act of compliance but they come to internalize the belief in their own guilt. They come to believe they have committed this crime. Now, that is a different type of process and a different story than what happens in the compliant false confessions.”
2) DNA
a) The downstairs area of the apartment had a lot of blood in the living area. DNA from the victim, one of the roommates and an unknown male were found. DNA from Esar Met was not found.
b) The fingernails of the victim were tested specifically for DNA from the accused. The result was ‘inconclusive’.
At the trial the prosecutor said he was sure the DNA under the fingernails was from Esar Met, but the appeal, which contains a summary of most of the evidence, Esar Met is mentioned as ‘not being excluded’ from the skin cell DNA found under the nails.
c) After his arrest, all of the blood on Esar Met’s clothing was tested. It was all his own blood. No blood nor DNA from the victim was found. He may have gotten slightly bloody in spots during the enthusiastic arrest, but during the interview shortly after no blood is visible. At some point though it was announced that a few blood droplets from the victim were found on the back of his jacket. This was presented at trial. These DNA results have not been available publicly yet.
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The body was found in his bathroom
This is listed here as ‘evidence’ because a lot of people read it and think it is proof of guilt.
The roommates did have access to the basement area and did use it. -
The body was extremely damaged and the child was tortured, abused severely.
Most media articles refer to the crime as a sort of sex crime, but one expert at trial called it ‘a crime of power’. The child had been beaten numerous places and the child’s arm was snapped at an odd angle. Shortly after finding the body a medical person told a detective that the child had been attacked sexually with an object, and a person was sent to the crime scene to look for that object. It appears possible that the person was trying to make the murder look like a child rape/murder. It may be worth noting that many times in Burma, over many years, riots and ethnic strife have been inflamed by a person from one ethnic group using rape accusations to start the flames. That is a unique feature of ethnic trouble in Burma and may be what was involved in this case.
Rape used as a weapon in Myanmar to ignite fear | Humanitarian Crises | Al Jazeera
Though some people may combine ‘sex crimes’ and ‘crimes of power’, here the distinction is important because the evidence seems to be that the killer was trying to make the child suffer. Even the worst injuries were inflicted while the child was alive, and it seems probable the killer was angry at the child. -
The child was grasping a handfull of hair in her hand, evidently yanked from the killer. This was prominent in the initial charging documents but is not mentioned in media coverage of the trial. The hairs had been sent to the FBI and it isn’t known what happened to them. They may have been lost and a person could speculate why.
https://www.theguardian.com/usnews/2015/apr/21/fbi-jail-hair-mass-disaster-falseconviction
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...c8d8c6e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html
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The bloody footprint
The killer’s footprint was evident in blood and at the trial an expert testified that the footprint could have been made by Esar Met. -
Timeline
The latest Esar Met could have left his apartment to catch a bus to his uncle’s house was around 2:30. In the beginning of the interview he says three children stopped by in the morning to watch tv and when they left he left to go to his uncle’s. The older brother of one of the children was the person who bought the tire sealant he needed for his uncle’s bicycle. According to at least one witness, that person, he did leave the apartment before the last time that the child left her home.
From the Salt Lake Tribune
""Than Hti Ke, a neighbor, said Esar Met stopped by to watch television at his apartment about 1 p.m. Monday, shortly before the girl disappeared. At about 3:30 p.m., Met showed up at his aunt’s Fort Union area home. Mi Cho said her nephew stayed the night and displayed no unusual behavior. "
During the trial the defense did not call any witnesses, including this person.
Shortly after the media began interviewing people the judge put a gag order on the case preventing anybody from speaking to the media.
The roommates came home at various times, notably
and
And just from those selections some problems appear evident in their statements.
- The ‘fleeing’ and ‘capture’
In the interviw Esar Met first says he had planned to visit his uncle that day, and the evidence does seem to support that. He did leave the apartment sometime between 12 noon and 230 pm. The child was reported missing around 6 or 7 or so that evening. The apartment where the body was, where the four roommates also were, was the only apartment that did not answer pounding on the door.
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Nevertheless, after interviewing the roommates, the investigators called Esar Met at his uncle’s house and he gave the phone to his aunt to give the address. He waited there. When the police arrived though they did not knock. Instead they kicked down the door, then told the media he had tried to flee. At the trial the police admitted that he had not tried to flee.
- Scratches
Esar Met had scratches on his skin
An expert testified that the scratches could have come from the victim. But in the interview he can be seen scratching himself, he seems to hav skin problems. He also had just been living in a refugee camp thirty days prior, on the edge of the jungle, and probably had any number of skin conditions that are common in tropical jungles. He also was a refugee living in a low rent apartment that probably had bed bugs and similar things.
If somebody has some idea on how to help him, and is interested in legal cases they could try to do something.
Obviously there is no legal recourse to him. He and his family have no money. Burmese Muslims have been horrificly abused as a group before they arrive in refugee camps and do not argue with authorities, so are not likely to look for recourse. Also, this was a high profile case that, even without the obvious evidentiary problems, caused embarassment to the police so there is resistance among them to having the case resolved properly.
Esar Met was kept in jail several years in Utah before the trial. The prosecutor said he had to research some things in other countries and had difficulty finding translators. There were many translators who spoke the relevant languages available at that time, some of them with special certifications, in the Southwest.