Ezra McCandless
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Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. On a seemingly ordinary evening, March 22nd, 2018, in Springbrook, Wisconsin, Don Sipple's quiet dinner was disrupted by persistent, frantic knocks on his door. Startled, he got up from his kitchen table to see who it was. What he found was beyond comprehension.

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Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings. As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases and

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Now, let's get to this week's episode. On March 22nd, 2018, Don Sipple was having a quiet dinner inside his Springbrook, Wisconsin home when someone knocked on his front door. When the knocking wouldn't stop, he got up from his kitchen table to see who it was. When he opened the door, a bleeding, distraught 19-year-old female was standing in her socks, begging for help. She was muddy, and her body was covered in bruises and blood.

She said she'd been raped and needed 911. Don brought the woman inside, offering her a blanket and get some help. Then he went into the other room to call the police. The call was then routed to the Dunn County, Wisconsin 911 operator. On the call, Don is heard telling the dispatcher, quote, I have a young lady that just came to my house and somebody attacked her. She has dried blood around her mouth, no shoes, and mud is up to her knees, end quote.

Deputies from the Dunn County Sheriff's Office were the first to arrive at the scene. They immediately went to the victim, but she wasn't able to say much. In fact, she wasn't able to tell investigators anything about what happened to her or who attacked her. She just kept saying she was hurt everywhere, but she couldn't remember anything else. All she knew was that she'd been attacked, and she kept asking for someone named Jason Mangle.

Even when the cops asked her what her name was, she said she couldn't remember. She also had the word boy carved into her right arm. The police took the woman to the hospital. They still needed to get her side of the story when she eventually calmed down. And they needed to perform a rape kit in order to collect any forensic evidence that might have been left behind from the assault. At the hospital, she kept asking to see this Jason Mangle guy.

That's all she really seemed to care about. She either needed to see him or talk to him or both. But before she was allowed to see anyone, the officers needed a statement from her. So they continued to press her about what happened and who attacked her or who carved the word boy on her arm. But she just kept saying she couldn't remember. She couldn't even remember her own name. She just knew someone had raped her and she ran to Don Sipple's farmhouse to get help. That's it.

It wasn't until later that night when she was at the hospital taking a shower that her memory started to come back to her. In that moment, she knew who had done this to her, who raped her and carved boy into her arm, her ex-boyfriend, Alex Woodworth. She also remembered her name, Ezra McCandless. Right away, the police got to work trying to hunt down this Alex Woodworth guy. They called his house, but no answer.

They showed up at the coffee place where he worked. He wasn't there either. In fact, no one had heard from Alex since earlier that day. So maybe he was on the run after the attack. The police continued to search for Alex the following day. And while they searched around Don Sipple's farmhouse, they spotted something. They found several bloody footprints on the ground that led up to a hill behind the house.

When they followed the footprints, it led them to a dirt road where they found a car that looked like it had become stuck in the dirt. As they got closer, they saw there was a body hanging out of the backseat. It was Alex Woodworth, her ex-boyfriend, who she said attacked her and carved the word boy into her forearm the day before. But why was he the one dead?

Alex was found in a silver 2003 Chevy Impala, but it wasn't your typical Impala. The police immediately knew that it was Ezra's car because she used it as her own personal paint canvas. As an aspiring artist, she had painted a picture of a bird riding a bicycle on the top of the roof. So there was no question that it was Ezra's car. But why was her attacker dead inside of her own car? Wasn't Alex the one who attacked Ezra?

The scene was as bad as it comes, and starkly different from your typical sexual assault type attack. But the detectives didn't know much. All they had was a basic narrative that Ezra had given them at the hospital. But here's what the scene looked like. Not only was Alex found slumped over in the backseat, but it looked like he was trying to get inside all the way so that he could drive away. He also had a scarf tied around his neck like he had used it to try and stop the bleeding.

And speaking of bleeding, when Alex's body was eventually removed from the car, investigators discovered that he had a total of 16 stab wounds on his body. He had stab wounds everywhere. His head, neck, groin, and torso. But oddly enough, he didn't have any defensive wounds. He didn't have a single cut to any of his hands, fingers, or forearms.

Not surprisingly, given the amount of stab wounds, there was blood everywhere. Blood inside the car. Bloody footprints were all around the outside of the vehicle parked in the dirt. Even Alex's body was covered in what investigators believed was his own blood. The scarf around his neck and the sweater he wore were also completely drenched in blood. But something about the blood evidence seemed off to detectives. Or at least, it didn't seem to match up with Ezra's story.

Instead of finding most of the blood inside the car, they found a lot more blood outside. Like, Ezra and Alex had been involved in some type of struggle or fight outside of the car, not inside. When detectives took a step back and looked at everything as a whole, they knew there had to be more to this story. A lot more happened than a typical sexual assault.

Once she was released from the hospital, Ezra was brought down to the Dunn County Police Station for more questioning. By this point, Ezra seemed like an entirely different person than she had been when she first showed up at Don Sipple's farmhouse the day before. She had finally remembered who she was and said she knew exactly what happened to her and why Alex Woodworth ended up dead. So this was really the first time the police could get the entire story.

Now here's what she had to say during this first police interview. According to Ezra, March 22nd, 2018, the day of the attack, started as an ordinary day. After she woke up, she wrote in her daily journal. After that, she logged onto her parents' computer to check some emails. And then she fed her dog and cat before showering and getting dressed. The plan for that day was to go to Alex's place to return some items to him.

They were some things that Alex had given to her when they were dating. But after the breakup, Ezra said that the items made her feel sad. So later that day, she planned to go to his house and drop the items off. Ezra told investigators she needed to be back at her dad's house by 5 o'clock p.m. that evening to watch his stepson. So the plan wasn't to be gone long. Ezra said she went over to Alex's house and the two talked briefly in his living room.

After that, they decided to go for a drive inside Ezra's car so that they could keep talking. But at some point during this drive, their conversation took a turn. According to Ezra, after they parked in a remote spot so that they could talk some more, Alex pulled out a knife and jumped on top of her. She said she had never seen him this upset or this angry before, so she knew she was in trouble.

She sensed Alex had driven her out there to that remote spot to kill her. Then Alex started using the knife to cut away at her clothes. He was going to rape her. But before she let that happen, she grabbed the knife from Alex's hands and in the process cut her own hand. Then Ezra said she started stabbing Alex in self-defense. It was either going to be him or her.

She took control of the knife and started stabbing him. She just kept stabbing until she could get out of the car and run away. By 4.30 p.m. that afternoon, Ezra found herself at Don Sipple's front door, and that's when the police were called. She said she had no idea if Alex was still alive or not. She just knew she needed to get away and get help. After getting Ezra's story, detectives still needed to figure out how she got the word boy carved into her left forearm.

Here's what she said. Ezra said she experienced some gender identity issues several years ago in high school. At one point, she wasn't even sure how she wanted to be identified, either as a boy or a girl. She didn't even know how to identify herself. And she thought that maybe Alex probably picked up on that too. So he wrote the word boy on her arm, basically making fun of her gender identity issues.

Although she still identified as a girl, the gender that she was assigned at birth, Alex saw her more as a boy than a girl. But the location of the word boy on Ezra's left arm didn't make sense. It was on her left forearm. According to Ezra's story, Alex did it when he was sitting in the right driver's seat side and she was in the passenger seat. Alex was also right-handed.

So for him to write the word boy perfectly into her left forearm while sitting in the right driver's seat, he would have had to have written it backward. When Ezra first spoke to the police in front of Don Sipple's house, she kept asking for someone named Jason Mangle. So who was this Jason guy? According to Ezra, Jason Mangle was another ex-boyfriend of hers.

The two of them met and started dating about 10 months before Alex had attacked her. And interestingly enough, Alex Woodworth and Jason Mangle were also friends. Ezra and Jason met in the summer of 2017 at Racy's Coffee Shop, the same place where Alex worked as a barista. According to both Ezra and Jason, the two of them instantly had a connection.

Even though there was a significant age gap, Jason was 33 and Ezra was only 19 when they met. They both said the age difference didn't matter. Their relationship was so serious that Ezra moved into Jason's apartment after only about a month of dating. And they even talked about getting married. Jason would often call Ezra his wife and she would refer to him as her husband.

As far as their relationship went, it had its fair share of issues, so it wasn't all rainbows and butterflies. Not only was Jason significantly older than Ezra, but he was also more stable. At the time, he worked as a medic for the Army Reserve, which meant that he would be gone for a couple of weekends out of each month. Ezra, on the other hand, was more of a free spirit.

She was the type of girl who would often break into old and abandoned buildings so that she could take photos. She was also the type to not shy away from her creative side. She even used her car as a personal paint canvas when she painted a picture on it. When she met Jason Mangle, she was unemployed and had dropped out of college. She moved to Eau Claire, the city where she met Jason at Racy's Coffee Shop, to start a new life for herself.

So they were both in vastly different stages of their lives in the summer of 2017. Sometime during the late summer of 2017, Ezra was introduced to Alex Woodworth. Alex worked as a barista at Racy's Coffee Shop in Eau Claire, and Jason and Ezra were regular customers. Racy's Coffee Shop was a popular hangout spot for those living in Eau Claire. It was a spot that attracted many different people with different interests.

So while hanging out at Racy's, Jason and Ezra both became friends with Alex. When they all met and became friends, Alex was 23 years old. Besides working part-time at Racy's, he also worked as a substitute teacher, dreaming of becoming a philosophy professor someday. He was said to love philosophy so much that he never stopped talking about it.

He would talk about philosophy with anyone who would listen to him. He always had it on his mind. Alex was also a big family guy. As the oldest of four siblings, he grew up incredibly close to his siblings and parents. If he wasn't substitute teaching or working at Racy's coffee shop, he was either at church or spending time with his family.

He was also described as a deeply caring person who wanted to take care of creatures that most people didn't, like strange bugs and spiders. This same caring sentiment also translated to the people that he met. He never met a person he didn't like. So when Ezra was introduced to Alex in late 2017, she instantly became someone that Alex really cared about.

According to Ezra, her friendship with Alex turned romantic sometime in November 2017. Even though she was still dating and living with Jason Mangle, she started dating Alex on the side. But not long after that, Jason found out about the relationship and felt incredibly betrayed. Not only was his girlfriend cheating on him, but Alex Woodworth was also his close friend.

The three of them had all become incredibly close that year, so it was a double betrayal for Jason. After Jason found out Ezra was cheating, they broke up. Ezra moved out of the apartment, and she also broke up with Alex Woodworth. But the breakup didn't mean that Jason and Ezra stopped talking. In fact, it was the exact opposite.

After they broke up, they continued to see each other and hang out through the end of 2017 and the start of 2018. In February 2018, Jason left for a military training camp for two weeks. And during that time, something happened between Ezra and another one of Jason's close friends, a guy named John Hansen.

Within a few days of returning from military training, Jason found text messages on Ezra's cell phone between her and his friend John Hansen. The messages suggested that they had seen each other and may have slept together while Jason was away at the two-week training. But when Jason confronted Ezra about it, she said the encounter wasn't consensual and she accused John Hansen of rape.

So on February 25th, 2018, Jason went to the police department with Ezra to file a police report. Even though John was one of Jason's best friends at the time, he wanted to support Ezra. So Ezra told the police that one night while Jason was away with the military, she hung out with one of his best friends, John Hanson. She said John kept giving her alcohol and at one point she started to black out from drinking so much.

Then he took her upstairs and raped her. She said she was too drunk to stop it or get him off of her. So a sexual assault took place. She was adamant with investigators that it was not consensual and that she believed that John had got her drunk and took advantage of her. But Ezra's rape story had a lot of holes in it, starting with the police's interview with Alex Woodworth.

On March 3rd, 2018, the police interviewed Alex about Ezra's claim. But according to him, Ezra had told him that she willingly had sex with John while Jason was away, but she ultimately regretted it. The police also searched John's cell phone, which showed text messages between him and Ezra, proving even more that their interaction was in fact consensual.

They read flirty text after text between them, all suggesting that they planned to have sex that night. They also seemed to be making plans to meet up in the future. So after speaking with Alex Woodworth and going through John Hansen's cell phone, the police dropped Ezra's rape charge. They didn't think she was sexually assaulted and believed that the whole thing was consensual. Ezra went from looking like an innocent rape victim to a complete liar.

someone who accused John Hansen of raping her simply because she regretted it after her ex-boyfriend, Jason Mingle, found out about it. Two weeks later, Alex Woodworth was found dead. When Ezra provided detectives with her initial account of what happened between her and Alex on March 22nd, they went back to the crime scene. And as they looked at it again, they found even more inconsistencies in her story. First was Alex's body.

His official cause of death was determined to be sharp force injury to the head, and the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. But a lot of things about Alex's body didn't align with Ezra's story about self-defense. For one, the sheer number of stab wounds was, well, it was strange. Alex was stabbed 16 times. That's a lot for self-defense.

Plus, none of Alex's injuries were considered fatal in and of themselves. This meant that he likely didn't die right away. In fact, he probably suffered and didn't die until he eventually lost too much blood. That explains why the scarf was found around his neck. He probably used it to try and stop the bleeding. He also likely tried to get help.

And if he had gotten help relatively quickly, he probably could have survived. But there was no way for him to call for help. When Ezra ran away to Don Sipple's farmhouse, she took Alex's cell phone with her. She told detectives she took the cell phone so that she could call for help. But when she was running away, she accidentally fell, landed on the cell phone, and broke it.

So she was never able to call for help. And Alex, well, he couldn't call for help because she took his phone. It's also important to mention here that at the time, Ezra didn't have a cell phone of her own. So the only phone she had with her that night was Alex's. Ezra's own injuries from that night were also inconsistent with her original story.

Dr. Tilliston, who treated Ezra in the emergency room that night, told investigators her injuries looked more like they were self-inflicted, not caused by anyone else. Then what about the word boy that was carved into her arm? Well, detectives were already convinced that Alex wasn't the one who did it. In fact, they believed Ezra had done it to herself. They just didn't know why.

Forensic evidence at the crime scene was also telling to investigators. In the police reports, they all noted that the majority of the blood evidence was found outside of the car, not inside. This was a big contradiction to Ezra's story because she claimed she was attacked in the backseat of the car, but there was virtually no blood found in the backseat.

Most of the blood was just outside of the car, suggesting that that's where Alex had been stabbed. Alex himself also didn't have any defensive wounds. Wouldn't you think someone who's being stabbed 16 different times would at least have some amount of defensive wounds, either on his arms or hands? Well, he didn't have any. Finally, there were inconsistencies in Ezra's timeline.

Based on when the medical examiner believed Alex was killed and the time that Ezra showed up on Don Sipple's front doorstep, way too much time had passed. So this led investigators to speculate whether Ezra used that time to stage the scene and the attack. Detectives also interviewed Jason Mangle, and he was able to fill in even more gaps. According to Jason, he saw Ezra a few hours before the alleged attack happened.

He told investigators that Ezra showed up at Racy's coffee shop completely unannounced earlier that day. Even though they had exchanged 500 text messages the night before, she never mentioned she planned to return to Eau Claire or Racy's that morning. Jason's first thought was that Ezra didn't seem like herself when she showed up at Racy's. She seemed agitated or angry.

When he asked her what she was doing back in Eau Claire, she said she planned to go to Alex's house to talk and drop off a few things she didn't want anymore. So after chatting briefly, Jason said she left to go to Alex's. But something about how she was acting just didn't quite sit right. She didn't seem like the person he had known for the last 10 months and once dated. So he decided to follow Ezra to Alex's house.

When he got to Alex's, he saw her car parked outside, and he said that he waited there for about 45 minutes. Eventually, he went inside the house to make sure that everything was okay between Alex and Ezra. He remembered that when he got inside, he saw the two of them sitting together on the couch, and that they both seemed like they were in the middle of a deep conversation. So he said he turned around, walked outside of the house, and

But that's when he was confronted by the Eau Claire Police Department. One of Alex's neighbors, who saw Jason pacing back and forth in front of the house, thought that he looked a little too suspicious. So they decided to call the police. Jason then explained to officers that he rode his bike to Alex's house because he was concerned about his ex-girlfriend, Ezra, who was also inside.

He said she seemed really upset and wasn't acting like herself. So he decided to go there to make sure that everything was okay. So after speaking with Jason, the police officers decided that everything was fine. And they left without taking any type of official police report. This was the last time Jason saw his friend, Alex Woodworth, alive.

because just a few short hours later, he was dead and Ezra was at Don Sipple's front door claiming she had been attacked. Over the next two weeks, the police took a hard look at all the evidence they had and all the inconsistencies. From 16 stab wounds to the lack of defensive wounds on Alex to the emergency room doctor's belief that Ezra's injuries were self-inflicted to the word boy written on her arm that she wrote herself.

to the blood found outside of the car instead of inside, to the false rape allegation that Ezra had made about another one of Jason Mangle's friends, John Hansen, to Alex's cell phone so that he couldn't call for help. Detectives even discovered that the knife used to stab Alex didn't belong to him at all. It belonged to Ezra's father. Her dad had told detectives that he had given her some of his knives in the past, so it was Ezra herself who brought the knife that day.

All of the evidence pointed in one direction, Ezra McCandless. Two weeks after the alleged attack, Ezra was arrested on charges of first-degree intentional homicide on April 6, 2018, the highest charge possible in the state of Wisconsin. At this point, investigators believed they had put together the timeline of what actually happened that day.

They believed Ezra planned the entire thing after Alex told the police about her consensual encounter with one of Jason Mingle's best friends, John Hansen. Alex was essentially the one who led the police to drop the rape charges. She also thought Alex was in the way of her getting back with Jason. Even though she was the one who also slept with Alex while still dating and living with Jason,

The police believed she considered Alex the reason why Jason wasn't getting back together with her. So, to seek revenge, she went to Alex's house that day, armed with one of her father's knives, with the intent to lure him to a secluded area inside her car. Once she found a spot, the police believed Ezra was the one who first started attacking Alex, not the other way around like she originally claimed.

One of Alex's stab wounds was to the back of his head. So that told investigators she probably caught him completely off guard. That also explains why he didn't have any defensive wounds. Basically, he had no idea that the attack was about to happen. After stabbing Alex 16 times, the police believed Ezra went on to stage the entire crime scene. She ripped her own clothes to make it look like Alex had used the knife on her,

She carved the word boy into her arm, which she later admitted that she actually did. She took his cell phone so that he had no way of calling for help. And the police even believe she tried to get Alex's body back inside the car so that she could drive away and dump his body somewhere else. That explains why his body was found half inside and half outside of the car.

but the police don't think Ezra was physically able to do it. So she abandoned her original idea and went to John Simple's house instead. Once she was in front of detectives, the lies about the whole situation started pouring out of her mouth. At first, she came across as an innocent victim, but the more the police looked at the crime scene and the forensic evidence, the more inconsistencies and lies they found in her story.

18 months after her arrest, Ezra was on trial for first-degree intentional homicide. If convicted, she faced spending the rest of her life behind bars. But she was determined not to let that happen. When she showed up on the first day of the trial, she looked like a completely different person. She didn't look like a cold-blooded killer that the police and prosecution was going to argue.

Instead, she looked like an innocent 20-year-old girl. Her hair was down, she had barely any makeup on, and she came to court dressed in a pink blazer. In front of the jury, she looked completely innocent and naive. Again, nothing like a cold-blooded killer. The biggest witness for the prosecution was Ezra's ex-boyfriend, Jason Mangle.

Not only did he testify to their eight-month-long relationship, but he also told the jury about he was the one who introduced Alex Woodworth and Ezra in the first place. He also testified about how she had cheated on him not only once with Alex, but twice with his best friend, John Hanson, who she later accused of rape. His testimony painted a conniving portrait of the real Ezra.

a cheating, selfish liar driven by jealousy to murder Alex Woodworth. Against the advice of almost every criminal defense lawyer, Ezra took the stand in her own defense. When she testified, she wore a green sweater that Jason Mangle had given her as a gift. As expected, Ezra looked every bit like the victim in this case. She stuck to her original self-defense story.

and she testified that she didn't want to kill Alex, but it was either him or her. So she's sorry, but it had to be him. But her story changed once again when she got on the stand. Initially, she told detectives she grabbed the knife from Alex when he started cutting her clothes.

But at trial, she said she first was able to knee him in the groin, and that's when he dropped the knife and she was able to pick it up. Now, this is a small difference, but the prosecution saw it as yet another inconsistency. The prosecution argued Ezra stabbed Alex in hopes of preventing him from getting in the way of her rekindling her relationship with Jason.

They also said she was angry about him telling the police about having sex with John Hansen. He was the one who essentially caused all the charges to be dropped. And basically after that, Ezra was labeled as a liar. But the defense claimed Alex was the angry one, not Ezra. They claimed Alex was furious that Ezra didn't want to be with him anymore and instead wanted to be with Jason.

So he was the aggressor, and she had no choice but to act in self-defense to save her own life. If he hadn't forced himself upon her, this would have never happened. When it came to Ezra's memory loss right after the attack happened, the defense hired an expert to testify that she was likely under a lot of stress. Sometimes, people under a lot of stress can have difficulty remembering the crime.

So when the police showed up and she couldn't remember what happened or who she was, that's probably what happened. Her defense attorney argued that she wasn't trying to intentionally mislead investigators about what happened. She just couldn't remember. The prosecution, however, said that that was entirely made up. They don't believe she experienced any type of actual memory loss.

According to them, it was all Ezra's way of trying to get away with murder. It was simply convenient memory loss. The jury learned who Ezra was from both sides, the prosecution and her defense. Not only did the defense want to make her look innocent, but they also told the jury about her upbringing.

how she was actually born with the name Monica Carlin, not Ezra McCandless, and she was born in Stanley, Wisconsin. Her mom gave birth to her when she was only 14 years old, so her childhood and life were troubled from the start. When she was in high school, she suffered from gender identity issues. She didn't know whether she was a girl or boy.

By the time she was 18, she moved to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and changed her name to Ezra McCandless, after a character from Into the Wild. But for the prosecution, Ezra was a jealous young girl who would do anything, including murder, to get what she wanted. Every day throughout the two-week trial, Ezra dressed in a completely different, colorful outfit and wore different hairstyles.

Even when she wasn't on the stand, it looked like she was trying to draw attention to herself. She was trying to look as innocent as possible. She hoped that somehow her timidness could convince the jury that this was self-defense. But she was wrong. The jury didn't buy it. After a few hours of deliberation, they returned with a guilty verdict on November 1st, 2019.

They found Ezra guilty of first-degree intentional homicide for the killing of 24-year-old Alex Woodworth. As the verdict was read, Ezra looked like she was in complete shock and about to faint. It looked like she'd never considered the possibility that the jury wouldn't believe her. Three months later, on February 7, 2020, Ezra was ordered back to court. This time, it was for her sentencing hearing.

She was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after serving at least 50 years. If she's ever released and granted parole, she would be in her 70s. The only time Ezra was said to have shown remorse was at her sentencing hearing. Throughout the trial, she never shed a tear or expressed any type of remorse for what happened.

She only seemed to show any kind of emotion after she was sentenced to life in prison. She spoke at the hearing, saying in part, quote, I want to say how sorry I am that they have lost their son, but sorry doesn't cut it in my mind. I loved Alex so much, and I also feel a great loss, and I'm so sorry, end quote. But by that point, it was too late.

Judge James Peterson, the judge who sentenced Ezra, even made a point of saying that he didn't feel like her courtroom apology was sincere. It was too little, too late. Not long after she was taken to prison to start serving her sentence, Alex Woodward's father publicly forgave Ezra for what she did to his eldest son. In his statement, he said, quote,

I've been forgiven, so I forgave her. It's just that simple. Hates? Like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. End quote. Alex's family wants him to be remembered for the nice and kind person that he was. According to them, he was someone who everyone loved. And Alex always wanted everyone to smile. They don't want him to only be remembered for how he was murdered.

Today, Ezra is serving her life sentence in an all-female Wisconsin prison facility. Although she was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, she must serve at least 50 years of that sentence to ever be considered for release. Although the exact motive behind Alex Woodward's murder might not fully be understood, jealousy is believed to have been a major factor.

Ezra killed Alex because he was in the way of her relationship with Jason Mangle. Important forensic evidence collected at the crime scene led investigators to the truth about what really happened on March 22, 2018. The blood found outside of the car completely contradicted where Ezra said she was attacked. The lack of defensive wounds on Alex's body suggested he was surprised by the stabbing.

And the word boy carved into Ezra's arm was her own doing. Ezra McCandless wasn't a victim like she wanted everyone else to believe. Based on the forensic evidence, she was a jealous, cold-blooded killer. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.

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