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cover of episode Lies Captured on Police Bodycam – The Chacey & Robert Poynter Case

Lies Captured on Police Bodycam – The Chacey & Robert Poynter Case

2023/7/20
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True Crime with Kendall Rae

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Chasey and Robert's marriage deteriorated quickly, with Chasey claiming Robert was unfaithful and abusive, while Robert installed cameras to monitor her activities due to her alleged infidelity.

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Hello guys and welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about a case that I recently came across and I was just so interested in it. I think what makes it so intriguing is there is a ton of body cam and police interrogation footage. This story takes place back in 2016 in Royce City, Texas.

There was a man living there named Robert and he was a firefighter and a very well respected firefighter. In fact, he was even the captain. Most of his friends called him Bob, especially people who worked in the department. And he had worked in the university park fire department for over 18 years and had been the captain since 2012. He was a really good man. He was

very dedicated to being a public servant. He even went down and volunteered his time working in the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, trying to find people that had survived or people who hadn't. It's a really tough and dangerous job to be a firefighter and he loved it. He absolutely loved what he did. People who knew him said he was kind of like a gentle giant. He was just really sweet, but you know, could be protective

and tough when he needed to be. One time the department was putting out a local neighborhood fire and there was this little girl outside of the fire who was so upset, just like totally freaked out by the situation. And Robert took the time to calm her down after, talked to her, gave her a hug, said that they were all okay.

And that's just the kind of guy that he was. He was just always looking out for other people and really was in this job to help the community. Robert was married to his high school sweetheart. Her name was Amy Pointer. They were married for 20 years and they had two daughters named Natalie and Nicole, and they were a pretty happy family. Everything was going really well in their lives. They were very established in Royce City and loved the area, but eventually things started falling apart.

According to Amy, signs started showing up that Robert had not been being faithful to her. He wasn't coming home as much. His conversations seemed to be cut short. It just seemed like he was hiding something. I mean...

Most women just have a feeling, you know, I think she just had a gut intuition. But eventually her daughter, Nicole, was able to confirm that her father was having an affair because she found out that he had a second cell phone, which doesn't look good. This is when they realized that there was someone else in his life and they found out that she was a 20 year old woman named Chasey Tyler Morman.

She was a local nursing aide and she was also 18 years younger than Robert. She had met Robert through a mutual friend, I guess, and was just into him right away. And she claimed that she was under the impression that he was already getting a separation from his wife. She claimed she's not a homewrecker. She had no idea that he was married and had two children at the time. She just said that when they met, sparks flew and she just couldn't control herself around him. He was goofy. He made her laugh.

and she just liked being around him. And so she was kind of determined to end up with him. Now, I guess he, on the other hand, was a little more apprehensive about the whole thing because he was married, because she was so young, but she was really the one who was pursuing him very strongly. According to the other guys at the fire department, she would just come down there all the time and hang out, ask where he was.

try to get as much information as she could even when he wasn't there or if he was there she would just make it very clear to him that she wanted him. They started seeing each other in December of 2007 and his marriage quickly fell apart right after this. This was obviously shocking for his girls. I mean, this really young woman closer to their age than his age comes in the picture

after ruining their parents' marriage and tries to really lock him down. It seemed like Chasey from the beginning wanted to marry him. So like I said, they started dating in December of 2007 and by May of 2009, Chasey was already pregnant. They got married on December 28th, 2009 when Chasey was 22 and he was 40. They had a daughter together. Her name and identity is not out there. She's a minor. And they went on to live the next six and a half, seven years together.

as a family, but it wasn't such a great relationship. I mean, things started going bad for them pretty quickly.

According to Chasey, there was nothing in particular that set it off. Like there wasn't an event or anything. She just claimed that they kind of fell out of love and it just happened naturally. She said it wasn't long after their marriage started that they started sleeping in separate bedrooms, which is always really concerning. And Chasey felt like Robert didn't love her anymore, that he never actually loved her as much as he loved his previous wife, Amy, who was his high school sweetheart. She said that she felt that

that he still loved her, that he wished the marriage had never fallen apart and that he wished he'd go back to her instead. So not going so well for them. But not only that, Chasey claimed that Robert had a bit of a temper, that he kind of would lose his shit at her often. She also claimed that he had low testosterone levels and was getting treatments and injections

that were making him worse when it came to his temper. Now, Amy, his ex-wife says that that is not true. She said that he was getting treatments, but it in no way affected his temper. It wasn't like broid rage or anything like that. But Chasey claims that he was violent with her.

and that he was physically, mentally, and verbally abusive several times in their marriage. However, Amy says that this is just not true, that she never experienced any abuse of any kind in her relationship with Robert. And both of the girls, Natalie and Nicole, also said that they never saw their father be abusive to either of the women. Natalie had even spent time living with them. She said she saw their routine and everything was normal to her.

But Chasey claims that it's all true, that they're all just covering for him. And the reason that she never had reported the abuse to the police is because he worked in the fire department. She didn't want him to lose his job. So anyway, the other reason that Chasey says the marriage was just falling apart after seven years was because she had lost a lot of

weight since they had first gotten together. In the last two years of their relationship, she lost 104 pounds and she claimed that Robert really liked her more as a curvy woman and just wasn't attracted to her once she had lost all of the weight. So at this point, Chacey was not getting enough attention. She was feeling really good about herself and she wanted a man that was going to appreciate it. So she started seeing some other younger men.

Natalie and Nicole had a feeling that she was probably cheating. They said that she was also just a terrible stepmother and would leave their six and a half year old daughter at the house when Robert had like overnight shifts for the fire department. She would just leave her there and go out and meet up with guys in the middle of the night or go out to clubs. And Natalie and Nicole claimed that she started doing this when their sister was only like four years old, way too young to be left

home alone. She would always tell Robert or the girls that she was going to the gym, even at odd hours of the night, like two in the morning. And clearly she was not at the actual gym. She was trying to hide a lot of this from Robert that she was clearly seeing a couple of other men. But the girls just knew they had to tell their dad.

So Natalie told Robert that Chasey had been sneaking out. She had been leaving their daughter home alone to go out and see other men. And he was furious. He immediately filed for divorce. He was just absolutely done with her. People think that he...

had a feeling that this was happening even before seeing this confirmation. So he was just at that breaking point, but eventually something changed because Robert actually backed out of the divorce and decided to try to make things work with Chasey. His friends and family think that it wasn't because he wanted to really work on it with her or because he loved her, that it was really because he was worried about

losing his daughter. He was in his forties in his second marriage and it wasn't working out and he was kind of freaking out. It was more convenient and easy to just stay with Chasey, but he didn't trust her at all. In fact, he installed cameras on their house. He put one right next to the front door so that if anyone came to the door to get Chasey or she left,

So one night they're all at home and someone rings the doorbell. Chasey apparently knew exactly who it was because she got up, ran to the door and told the guy to leave, to get off the property, hurry before Robert sees you. And it was obviously one of the guys she was cheating on him with. Robert didn't actually get to confront this guy and ask him what he was doing, but he knew, he knew exactly why that guy was there.

Meanwhile, Robert is telling everyone at the fire department how miserable he is in this relationship that he's just barely hanging on. And his friends are trying to tell him, you know, man, it's not worth it. You should leave. But he tells them that he's going to make one more attempt to save the marriage. And that is by taking Chasey and their daughter to Mexico for a little family vacation, see if they can just get away from the distractions and reconnect. So they go to Mexico and it doesn't go well.

It's not working to reconnect, that's for sure. In fact, it got a lot worse because while they were there, Robert caught Chasey on the phone with another guy. When he got back from the trip, he told his friends at the department that it just was not going to work out between them and he was officially giving up. But no one could possibly imagine what would happen only two days after he said this. On September 9th, 2016, a

very frantic 911 call came in from Chasey Poynter to the police dispatch and she sounded so freaked out. - Okay, calm down. Where are you at? -

She's painting on camera 2595. She's extremely out of breath. She sounds like she's running. We're out with that female, 25. So obviously it sounds really bad. She sounds really freaked out. And for the police coming up to that scene, I think they were a bit freaked out too. What's going on? My husband, Jeeva, is stuck in the back. We're on

She was out in this unmaintained area of Royce City on these dirt roads that are really for like tractors or farm, other farm vehicles. They're not for people to just drive down.

And what's weird is we don't even really know how she ended up there because this was an area that she knew pretty well. She lived there for a really long time. And she just said that she happened to get lost and took the wrong turn and ended up in the middle of nowhere, which is already suspicious because why on earth would you continue to drive down a dark dirt road? You clearly would figure out pretty quick that you're not on the right road, but they pull up. Chasey claimed that her and Robert were out driving.

at their Jeep in this area because she was stuck. She claimed some strange man came out of the shadows and shot Robert in the head. From the moment that police got there, they had a feeling that something was off. She seemed suspicious to them literally right away. Breathe for me, Ms. Pointer. Calm down and breathe for me, okay? Breathe fast like that. You're not helping yourself, okay? I don't, I don't ever take this road. All right. What made you come down this one? I missed my last one. Oh, you did? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Okay.

thoughts out. She's clearly panic. And it's hard to say how much of that is real panic and how much of it is acting. I think it's definitely a little bit of both. So they got her into an ambulance to calm down, tried to get her some oxygen. You want a little bit of oxygen to help you out? She was just frantic. Tried to see if they could calm her down. She was clearly having a panic attack and they wanted to try to understand what had even happened here. Chasey. Chasey? Chasey what? Tell us what, what, what happened?

So once she calmed down a little bit, Chasey starts telling him about how she and Robert were supposed to meet up at Jack in the Box for some tacos. Why would you go to Jack in the Box for tacos?

But she wanted to have a talk with him because they had been fighting. But she claimed that on the way to Jack in the Box, her Jeep got stuck in the mud and she called Robert and he came to help her because he was that type of guy. She said it was then that some guy just came out of the darkness and shot him and left her completely untouched for some reason. I jumped in the Jeep. It was rolling very slowly.

- I was holding his head in my left hand and I put the Jeep in park with my right hand and I just, I was calling his name. - The first thing that police were skeptical of is if this person came up and killed him, why are you okay? Someone like that wouldn't just leave a witness, okay? That just makes no sense. Also just the way that she was talking to them. It seemed like she was panicking for sure, but she was also kind of putting on a show.

Eventually they were like, we should probably read her Miranda rights since she's just saying all this stuff. She wasn't even arrested at this point, but they decided to go ahead and read her Miranda rights. And after

after she was told she has the right to remain silent, she did not. She kept on talking and she just started spilling the tea about everything that was going on in that marriage from the affairs to custody wars, everything. So as she's telling them all of this stuff,

It's starting to kind of come together and they're really not believing much of what she's saying. Her story is not credible. It just makes no sense. They took some pictures with her. They're trying to finish collecting the information before they bring her into the police station. And then she starts to tell them about

how she was at a friend's house right before all this happened. And his name is Michael Garza. As soon as they ask if she's dating Michael Garza, she says yes. Michael's house. Hey, Michael's house. Tell me his name again. I'm sorry. Michael Garza. Michael Garza. Yes. Y'all have a relationship? Yes.

Yes. So this is looking like a very toxic relationship. She's clearly having affairs. I mean, all sorts of red flags are flying up as she's talking. And the more she talked, the more she started seeming like a suspect. So who is Michael Garza? Well, he was just one of the many men that Chasen

that Chasey was having an affair with at the time of Robert's death. He wasn't a very serious relationship to her. It's not like she was planning to like run off with him. In fact, she had slept with another guy that morning. Like she had multiple partners throughout the day. Normally she'd hit up all these different guys. So she saw one of her lovers that morning, that afternoon she's with Michael Garza. And according to her, she leaves Michael's house

and starts heading to the Jack in the Box to go have taco night with Robert. And then her Jeep is stuck in the mud. So the police are obviously already starting to figure out something is not right about the situation. So they bring her in for interrogation and they start at 2.20 in the morning and it lasts for eight hours. I'll be transporting the female to Royce City Police Department. We get this door. 78.

Just have to sit right there. I really did love him. Right in front of my feet, there was someone standing there. Probably six foot, maybe. I could see dark clothes. That's it. I don't know if they're white. Like, I don't know anything. Somebody, from what you're saying, shoots your husband, cold-blooded murder, and just lets you run away.

There was someone standing there. I think you're full of crap. I want her to pull the trigger. I don't know who pulled the trigger. See, I think you do, and that's the problem. No, I don't. No. So as the detective is listening to her story, they're not buying it, obviously. And they start to tell her, you know, we don't believe you, and we want to know who actually killed Robert. And it did not take long for Chasey to crack. Only two hours into the investigation, she starts confessing. Who killed your husband? Who shot Robert at you?

They asked who killed your husband and it was then that she told him that Mike Garza did it. But of course she's not going to be completely honest here. She starts saying that even though yes Mike killed him she had no idea that he was going to do that and she had no part in this in any way. Chasey then starts changing her story and said that Michael and her were

were going to go confront Robert together at the Jack in the Box, that he came with her from his house to meet up with Robert. He got in her car with a shotgun and she claimed that she just had no idea that Michael was going to be killing Robert, that that was not ever a part of the plan. She said that they were just going to talk, that he was going to help her deal with the situation because they've been fighting so much. She claimed that Robert was trying to take her kid away from her.

And she wanted him to kind of scare him a little bit. That was always the plan, but never to kill him. She claims that Michael got into her Jeep with a shotgun and she just didn't see it. She said that it was all Michael's idea to make this plan to trap him out.

on this road. But she was supposed to call him and tell him the car was stuck and it was all Michael's idea. But she claims that she was always under the impression that Michael was simply going to be talking to Robert. She said that when Robert got there, she met him over at his car and they walked to her Jeep together. And while they were walking, she said that she made a joke about how he was wearing the same cologne that he wore on their wedding day. And he

he hadn't worn it in years. She was literally joking with him and acting like everything was fine as she's leading him back to the car that had Michael in it. As they were walking, she claims that she randomly yelled, stop, which makes no fucking sense. I don't understand this. If you were going to have your boyfriend confront your ex or whatever, and they're walking up to do it, why would you scream stop? Unless you knew he had a gun, there's no reason to be yelling stop.

Like, don't talk to him. I changed my mind. It's pretty obvious that she's making this up. Her story is just in no way credible. Any way she tells it or any way you slice it just doesn't make any sense. And what really sinks her ship the most is while she's sitting alone in the interrogation room, they, you know, they have cameras on these people. And a lot of people know this and they put on an act like Jodi Arias, good example, which is their podcast.

on her. Some people either don't know they're being filmed or they put on a show for investigators in that room. I don't know if Chasey just didn't know that there were cameras or what, but at some point while she's sitting in there alone, she says this.

All right, so case closed, right? So now that they've gotten most of the story out of Chasey, they're pretty confident that Michael Garza probably did this or had something to do with it. So they go looking for him, they go to his house, and he already hightailed it the fuck out of there. On September 15th, 2016, just a few days after he was killed, Robert Pointer was laid to rest. The fire department released a statement saying that the members of the University Park Fire Department were deeply saddened to hear of the death

of Captain Robert Pointer. Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the family during this difficult time. His funeral was huge. Firefighters from all over the state and police officers came to honor him. They actually stood outside of the church since not everyone could fit inside of it and lined it all

All the way down to the gas station down the street. It was extremely hard for his three children as well as Amy, his ex-wife, who also felt like they could have possibly worked things out and gotten back together. And she's just so sad to hear that Chasey said that he still loved her. And now she has no hope of ever knowing what could happen between them.

So meanwhile, investigators are working to try to figure out what happened and try to find Michael Garza. It wasn't long before they started figuring it all out just from Chasey's 10,000 text messages with other men. She had multiple relationships going at once. And they found a message on Facebook that really just cemented all of this. They believe that Chasey had alcoholism.

access to Robert's Facebook and somehow knew that he had sent this message. But Robert was talking to a defense attorney on Facebook and he actually said, I'm thinking of a surprise attack.

And obviously he didn't mean an actual attack, but I think he was trying to take custody away from her, especially because he found out how she would leave their daughter at home and he felt like he could be a better father. So Chasey somehow knew about this. She said that she found out the day before that he was planning a surprise attack on her and it was the next day.

day that he was shot in that Jeep. So obviously motive is starting to come together. Now they're getting a really clear picture of what happened. And if it wasn't already so obvious, they also found out that there was a life insurance policy. Chasey had actually convinced Robert a while back to change his life insurance policy so that she would be the main beneficiary instead of his two daughters, Nicole and Natalie. And his life insurance policy was for over $685,000.

I mean, he did a really risky job for a living and she knew that there was quite a bit of money in that policy.

that policy. His family and friends and police really believed that she saw Robert as an ATM machine, that she married him for financial gain as well. And was never that into the relationship. Now the life insurance policy was changed in April and detectives found out that right after it was changed, Chasey already started texting men looking for someone who could take care of Robert.

Some of the men that she was dating and had asked for help with this was Danny Mims, Brad Golden, Sean Butcher, and Michael Garza. She had told all of them things about Robert, things that weren't true. She said that she was in a desperate situation, expressed that she needed some way to get rid of him, that he was going to ruin her life. And she did this to all the guys, but the one that she really pushed was Michael Garza.

Now, prosecutors don't even think that she was that into Michael Garza, that she was sleeping with him and they had a relationship, but it seemed that she thought he was the one that was dumb enough to actually do this and that she had the best chance of convincing him. So they believe that she

like groomed him in order to do this. And then they found out that he was actually the one that she was talking to in Mexico, the one that really pissed off Robert. And on that vacation, she sent Michael a text that said, he's coming after me sooner or later. And that's where Garland replied, F him. No, I will shot that dude. So they brought in one of the other guys that she was seeing. His name is Brad Golden. And he's actually the one that showed up

up at the door on the camera, you know, weeks before this all happened. And he said that she was totally convincing. He had no idea she was married. Apparently she said she had been separated since 2014. I never even suspected.

And according to him, she would show up at his house like clockwork every day around 4 or 5.

All these other men were told that Robert was abusive and controlling and violent, all these things, but literally no one can back that up.

Chasey is the only person that says this. They've asked friends and neighbors. He's had no history of being violent. His ex-wife said that, his children said that. I mean, it seems like she is just dragging his reputation through the mud even after she murdered him. And before the trial, they had prepared a bunch of different text messages that really implicated that Chasey wanted Robert gone. She said, "I wish he'd run out of air in a fire." On July 11th, she said, "I need him gone."

Gone. G-O-N-E. And the day before the murder, after she saw that message on Facebook, she texted Michael Garza and said, I've made up my mind, which everyone believes she had decided at that point that she needed him dead for sure. So meanwhile, Michael Garza is on the run. The SWAT team had raided his house, came up empty, couldn't find anything and had no idea where he went. But the day after they SWATed his house, Michael just ended up showing up at the police station and turning himself off.

Right away, he was charged with Robert's murder and he did not want to speak to the police at all. He only wanted to talk to his attorney right away. So they already have a ton of evidence that it was Michael, that Chasey had asked him to do it. It was like a combination of the two of them. But the one thing that they didn't have was the murder weapon. And that's a huge thing when it comes to trial is having that weapon. Lucky for them though, five weeks after this had all happened, a farmer,

had actually unearthed the gun. He was plowing and it got turned up. I think Michael tried to bury it or something, but they found the gun. It matched the one that the medical examiner said was used to kill Robert. And not only that, but they did a search on it and found that it was registered to a guy named Matthew Garza, who is Michael Garza's brother. So at that point, it's a done deal. Police have what they needed. All they need to do is

have the trial. So Michael Garza's trial was up first. It started on July 10th, 2018. And Michael pleaded not guilty. Of course, he said that it wasn't him. He actually claimed that it was Chasey. He said that he knew that she wanted to take care of him and that he gave her his brother's shotgun because she was being abused and would need to defend herself. So

So he claims that she was the one who fired the shot and he denies even being there. He said it was his gun and everything, but he said that he couldn't have possibly killed Robert because at the time his family had a very sick cow named Oreo on their farm and he had to take care of that thing. And so there's just no way he could have left it just impossible. So obviously the jury didn't buy it.

that alibi because you can clearly leave a sick cow. Unless the cow is going to get up there and testify for you, it's not going to work. So on July 20th, 2018, Michael Garza was found guilty of killing Robert Pointer and also was sentenced to 99 years in prison. So Chasey was next to have her trial and because she was such a blabbermouth, her defense team decided to not put her up on the stand, but the jury still saw plenty of

her in action because they had all of that police body cam footage and the interrogation room footage. And she just really supplied them with plenty of material to see the real Chasey. The trial lasted two weeks. Chasey pulled a full Jodi Arias. She dyed her blonde hair brown and dressed like a librarian or something. Definitely was trying to separate herself

from her image. But it did not work because the jury came back after only four hours of deliberation and Chacey Poynter was found guilty of murdering Robert Poynter. She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years, which I highly doubt she'll ever get. So I'd say for the most part justice was served. It's terribly sad to lose someone like Robert Poynter, someone who's so good for their community and has helped

endless amounts of people. He was a really good father to his three girls and they miss him terribly. His life insurance money was split between his three daughters, so that's good. And as far as their poor daughter together, she's now in custody of Chasey's parents who cannot believe that this happened. And what's really nice is they also share custody with Robert Poynter's parents. So both sets of grandparents are still in her life because clearly she doesn't have either parent now. I feel like with people like Chasey, the truth just always comes out.

I mean, she really hosed herself in this situation by talking so damn much in the beginning. I honestly think it's kind of funny that she thought she was going to get away with this. It just seems so not thought out at all. But there are people out there who believe that Chasey didn't know that Michael Garza was going to shoot Robert.

That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode and make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple podcasts. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then stay safe out there.