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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. 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. Please get someone to my house. My girlfriend, I think she shot herself. There's blood everywhere. Came the call the night of September 2nd, 2010.
Florida police hurry to the apartment. As they enter, they find a man crouched over a bloody, lifeless body. The man looks up. It's one of their own. Deputy Sheriff Jeremy Banks. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 93. The Michelle O'Connell Story. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
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Hey everyone, I just want to say thank you so much for the birthday wishes. I celebrated my 32nd birthday over the weekend and the highlight of the entire time was competing in the Orange County Olympic Distance Triathlon on Sunday morning, the day after my birthday. As I've mentioned in recent episodes of the show, my third Ironman Triathlon is coming up in the next couple weeks at the end of the month.
So just getting out there and competing, it felt really good to race again. I haven't been able to do any marathons or any triathlons in months because of COVID-19. So it was just really fun to get out there and see people getting to get together again and enjoy themselves and get a good race on. So the case we're talking about this week is the 2010 death of 24-year-old Michelle O'Connell.
On September 2nd, 2010, first responders in St. Augustine, Florida, were dispatched to World Golf Village condo. The caller told the police, quote, Please get someone to my house. My girlfriend. I think she shot herself. There's blood everywhere. End quote.
The caller on the other end of the phone was no stranger to the police. He was one of their own. It was Jeremy Banks, a deputy sheriff with the St. John's County Sheriff's Department. When St. John's Sheriff's deputies arrived at Jeremy's condo, they found him crouched at the bathroom door. Next to him, the police discovered his 24-year-old girlfriend, Michelle O'Connell, lying on the floor with an apparent gunshot wound to her head.
Next to her body was a pill of prescription medication, and on the other side of her body was a gun. First responders immediately began performing CPR and life procedures on Michelle. But they were too late, and the gunshot wound to Michelle's head was fatal. She was pronounced dead at the scene at 11.48 p.m. Police deputies removed their fellow officer, Jeremy, from the condo and put him in a patrol car used as a makeshift interview room.
Detective Jessica Hines was the first person to interview Jeremy. Although it seems like deputies already had made their minds up that this was a textbook case of suicide, they still needed to check off all their boxes and interview Jeremy about what happened that night. During this interview between Detective Hines and Jeremy Banks, Jeremy told his superior that he was working in his garage when he heard a pop.
Being a police officer himself, he said it was apparent what the pop was. He immediately stopped what he was doing and ran inside his condo. He ran to the bathroom and said he couldn't get in because someone had locked the door from the inside. Then that's when he said he heard a second popping noise.
According to Jeremy, he told Detective Hines that he was able to break down the bathroom door where he saw his girlfriend Michelle lying on the floor with one apparent gunshot wound to the head. According to Jeremy, Michelle didn't own a firearm herself, so it was Jeremy's service weapon that was used. Jeremy said that Michelle must have gone into his room and got the service weapon while he worked on his motorcycle out in the garage.
Investigators concluded that Jeremy was correct. It was his service weapon that was used in Michelle's death. 24-year-old Michelle O'Connell was a single mother to a 4-year-old daughter, Alexis. Michelle and Jeremy began dating about one year earlier. Jeremy was introduced to Michelle through her brother who also worked in law enforcement. But in the months leading up to Michelle's death, her relationship with Jeremy was rocky.
According to families and friends of both Jeremy and Michelle, the couple argued a lot. Jeremy himself even disclosed to investigators that night that he and Michelle weren't getting along. Their relationship was on the rocks. After a few hours of examining the evidence inside the condo, the St. John's Sheriff's Department ruled Michelle's death a suicide.
Investigators cited Jeremy's service weapon found on the left side of Michelle's body as the weapon used. They also cited the bottle of prescription medication found on the right side indicating a suicide. Investigators didn't think they needed to collect or examine any other forensic evidence. But not everyone was so sure that Michelle committed suicide.
When sheriff deputies broke the news about Michelle's alleged suicide to her family, they were shocked. Not only because her death, because she died, but because the police said she killed herself. The news came as an utter surprise to the O'Connell family. Michelle never expressed to anyone in her life about plans to end her own life.
In fact, according to Michelle's family, there was one good solid proof that Michelle wouldn't kill herself. And that was her four-year-old daughter, Alexis. If you asked Michelle's friends and family, she was a great mom. Not just a good mom or an average mom, but a doting single mother who would do anything for her daughter, Alexis.
At one point, Michelle even worked four separate jobs just to support her daughter and put food on the table. Michelle's family knew that she would never do something that would leave her daughter without a mother. Besides being a single mother, Michelle's family also pointed to other significant events in her life that happened right before her death.
They pointed specifically to how Michelle just landed her dream job working at a daycare center just a few days before. They also pointed to conversations with her siblings about goals and dreams that she had. According to the O'Connells, none of this added up to a suicide. They believed that there was much more to the story that night. And the first person the police should question is her boyfriend, Jeremy Banks.
But St. John's deputies disagreed with the O'Connell family. They believed that their deputies thoroughly investigated the case and that they all came to the same conclusion, that this was a textbook case of suicide. Within two days of her death, the county's medical examiner's office ruled Michelle's death as a suicide, case closed.
Even after the medical examiner's ruling, Michelle's family still wasn't convinced, particularly Michelle's sister, Chrissy O'Connell. Chrissy told investigators that on the night her sister died, her sister and Jeremy had gone together to see the band Paramore in concert at the St. Augustine Amphitheater.
Throughout the night of the concert, Jeremy and Michelle argued and bickered with one another, like they had been for the last several months. Chrissy, as well as Jeremy, supported this evidence. Jeremy himself told investigators that he and Michelle were arguing during most of the concert. According to Chrissy O'Connell, her sister had plans about breaking up with Jeremy later that same night.
The sisters got together earlier that day and had lunch together. And during this lunch, Michelle confided in her sister that she was planning to break up with Jeremy and start looking for an apartment for her and Alexis. She said she was only going to the concert with him because they had already paid for the tickets. But after the show, she was going to break up with him. She was tired of all the fighting.
So at lunch earlier that day, Chrissy nearly begged her sister not to go to the concert that night. The family already suspected that there was physical and emotional abuse in Michelle and Jeremy's relationship. So Chrissy told her sister to just forget about the Paramore concert. She didn't think it was a good idea, but Michelle insisted.
According to Chrissy, Michelle told her, quote, Chrissy admitted that after a little convincing, she was fine with Michelle going to the concert.
And she felt better about the situation because she knew that her brother, Sean O'Connell, was also going with the couple to the concert. So she thought if there were going to be any issues that night between Michelle and Jeremy, at least their brother Sean was there to look after Michelle. That night, Chrissy babysat Michelle's four-year-old daughter, Alexis, while the three of them and a few other friends went to the concert.
Chrissy said that she started receiving text messages from Michelle shortly after the concert started. The first text from Michelle read, quote, promise me one thing, Lexi will be happy and always have a good life, end quote. To which Chrissy responded back, quote, promise you what? Michelle wrote back, quote, that no matter what, Lexi will be safe and loved, end
Chrissy responded back asking her sister what was going on. Why was she sending these text messages that were starting to scare her? By the time the concert ended, Michelle had sent Chrissy another text message that simply said that she was on her way to go pick her daughter up for the night that the concert was over. But Michelle never made it to Chrissy's apartment.
The text messages between Michelle and her sister Christy are alarming. What did Michelle mean when she said she wanted her sister to ensure that her daughter would be okay? Now, in my opinion, these are the types of text messages that someone would send if, in fact, they are suicidal. Jeremy told the police that on their way home that night, Michelle told him that she would have her things out of his condo by the end of the week.
When he asked her what she meant by this and asked her was she breaking up with him, she said yes, they were done, they were breaking up. Jeremy said that after that, they started arguing, not surprisingly. When they got to Jeremy's condo, Michelle went inside while he stayed outside with two of his friends who went to the concert.
At some point, Jeremy said Michelle came back out of the condo to get a makeup bag from his truck. Then she went back inside. About 10 to 20 minutes later, Jeremy told the police that his two friends had left and he decided that he didn't want to go back inside the condo just yet. So he decided to stay outside in the garage. He wanted to avoid getting into another fight with Michelle.
Then that's when he heard the gunshots. This episode of Forensic Tales is brought to you by Best Fiends. This fall is going to be big. Now that everything is finally getting back to normal, people will be headed out for long overdue vacations. And that means people will be playing Best Fiends like crazy.
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Although the St. John's Sheriff's Department refused to investigate Michelle's death as anything but a suicide, her family remained unconvinced.
Michelle's family pointed to many signs that they believed proved that she didn't intend to kill herself. The first piece of evidence they pointed to was her appointment book found inside of her car. In the appointment book, she had written down that she signed up for a CPR training just two days later. She also wrote down plans she had with a friend of hers, a woman named Mindy Foxx.
So the family was arguing that someone who intends to commit suicide doesn't continue to make plans. The family also brought up concerns about the prescription pills that the police found next to Michelle's body. The St. John's Sheriff's Department said that the pills were proof that she intended to kill herself that night, whether it was going to be from a prescription pill overdose or by shooting herself with Jeremy's service weapon.
But here's where this piece of evidence goes against what the police are saying. According to Michelle's family, the prescription pills didn't belong to Michelle. They belonged to Jeremy Banks. What was even more troubling was that the medical examiner found none of the prescription pills in Michelle's system during her autopsy, meaning she didn't ingest a single pill that night.
Plus, all of the pills inside the bottle were accounted for. There wasn't a single missing pill. This discovery had the family believing that maybe Jeremy was the one who planted the prescription bottle that was prescribed in his name next to Michelle's body to further his claim of suicide.
By this point, Michelle's family and friends were convinced that the reason why the St. John's Sheriff's Department wouldn't reopen the investigation was because there was a massive conflict of interest. Jeremy, Michelle's boyfriend, worked for the same law enforcement agency, the St. John's Sheriff's Department, the agency that was investigating the case.
Anytime you have a case involving someone who works for the investigating agency, there is always going to be some sort of conflict of interest. That doesn't mean that the investigating officers can't do their jobs fairly or without bias, but there's an inherent conflict of interest in these types of cases.
You've got Jeremy telling his fellow officers that Michelle killed herself. The police only investigated the case for a couple of hours before calling her family. And then within 48 hours, the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide. So right away, the O'Connell family had their concerns about this. Not only because they didn't think Michelle killed herself, but because it was Jeremy's own employer who was doing the investigating.
Finally, after four months of pressuring the sheriff's department, Officer David Shore agreed that they should reopen the case, or at least that the state should investigate to serve as a fresh set of eyes on it. Officer Shore admitted in an ABC interview on 2020 that he believed his department fell short on their duties as investigators.
Number one, he pointed out that his officers failed to speak to any neighbors in the area to look for any potential eyewitnesses. Number two, the fact that Jeremy wasn't photographed that night or in the days following Michelle's death. Taking photographs of Jeremy's body would help the police find out if he had any physical altercations that night or any physical injuries to his body.
Number three, the police didn't interview any of Jeremy's family or any of his friends. This would have helped the investigators better understand the nature of Michelle and Jeremy's relationship. Instead, the police solely relied on Jeremy's own testimony about what he said happened that night. Then finally, number four, the forensic evidence.
According to Officer David Shore, the police didn't collect any forensic evidence from inside the home. The officers went in there responding to an apparent suicide, so they didn't collect any evidence to investigate that anything else happened. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement agreed to look into the case, and Investigator Rusty Rogers was the head detective assigned.
As soon as the State Department started looking into Michelle's case, they uncovered important evidence that seemed to be missed by the St. John's Sheriff's Department. For starters, Investigator Rogers and his team at the state learned about two of Jeremy's neighbors who were home the night Michelle died.
When the state talked to these two women, they told officers that this was the first time that any law enforcement agency had reached out to them. According to these two women, they heard screams from a woman that came from the direction of Jeremy's condo that night. The screams, according to them, sounded like a woman who was calling out for help.
Obviously, in cases of suicide, it would be highly unusual for the victim to yell out for help right before they commit suicide. Now, it's unclear whether or not Jeremy and Michelle continued to argue and fight when they got back to the condo that night. So it's entirely possible that these two neighbors heard screams because it was just the couple arguing.
But I think the key here is that with these eyewitness testimony is that these neighbors claim that they heard the scream within minutes of the two gunshots. Now, this brings us to another critical piece of evidence, the two gunshots. Florida State investigators heavily investigated the claim that Jeremy's service weapon fired two gunshots.
Police photographs show that inside of the bathroom where Michelle died, the photographs revealed that one shot had been fired into the bathroom carpet and then the other was the gunshot to Michelle's head. This is an interesting discovery. If Michelle shot herself, why would there be two gunshots? Why would she first shoot into the carpet and then fire a second weapon into herself?
Well, if you ask the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, as well as Officer Rogers, the head detective in the case, this occurrence isn't really that uncommon. They've seen a handful of cases where a suicide victim fires what they call a test shot before the fatal shot.
So these two gunshot theories, or we'll just call it the two gunshot theory, can be explained by arguing that Michelle first fired a test shot into the carpet before turning the gun on herself, ultimately proving to be the fatal gunshot wound.
The two-gunshot theory can also be explained another way. Michelle's family would probably argue that the two gunshots prove that Michelle didn't kill herself. Instead, they suggest Jeremy and Michelle were in some sort of physical struggle. Jeremy fired the gun once, hitting the carpet and missing Michelle, then fired a second time, this time hitting Michelle in the head and killing her.
Remember, there's no dispute here over whether or not that the gun was fired twice that night. You've got Jeremy telling the police that he heard two shots. The two neighbors heard two gunshots. Then you've got the physical evidence that supports all three stories. The police did recover the second bullet from the carpet. So it's either Michelle fired a test round before killing herself,
or someone else handled Jeremy's service weapon. The next case surrounding the gun was whether or not Michelle could have shot herself based on where the gun's shell casings landed. Again, this was a test that the local sheriff's department did not perform four months earlier.
So Officer Rogers at the State Department called in a crime scene reconstructionist to perform a field test to determine if suicide was possible based on where the shell casings landed or if someone else could have shot her. What this crime scene reconstructionist did and what they concluded was that the location of the shell casings were not consistent with suicide.
In fact, where they were found was consistent with a homicide. After performing this test, this particular expert concluded that it was physically impossible for the shell casings to land where they did if Michelle shot herself. He also reported that the gun was found by Michelle's left hand, even though she was right-handed.
Now, we know it's not impossible to shoot yourself using your non-dominant hand. It's entirely possible. But what this expert is saying is that this does rise to a level of suspicion that maybe she didn't shoot herself. This expert hired by the state also said that there was no blood found on the gun itself.
which would be unusual if Michelle had used it to shoot herself. You would expect to find traces of cast-off blood on the gun. The police also didn't recover any DNA or fingerprints from Michelle on the weapon. So, based on his findings, he concluded that Michelle's death was a homicide. Jeremy agreed to sit down with state investigators to give his side of the story for a second time.
The state already had his initial statement he gave to the local sheriff's department, but they wanted to find out more about his relationship with Michelle. They also wanted to uncover any facts that may support the idea that Michelle was suicidal. This was a really big moment for the investigation. Up until this point, Jeremy had only been interviewed by his co-workers, the local sheriff's department.
This time around, it's an outside agency finally sitting down and questioning him. During the interview, Jeremy stuck to the relatively same story that he provided the sheriff's department. That he and Michelle weren't getting along. They argued and fought with each other a lot. He admitted that they did fight before, during, and after the Paramore concert.
But Jeremy revealed one key detail that he hadn't during his initial police interviews. He admitted to state investigators that he physically hit Michelle on one previous occasion. But according to Jeremy, this was an isolated incident. And since then, he's never done it again. This admission to state investigators was no surprise to Michelle's family.
They had been arguing all along that Jeremy had been physically and emotionally abusive towards Michelle, and that that was one of the reasons why she told her sister that she was planning to break up with him. While Officer Rogers is interviewing Jeremy, he hires the University of Florida Child Protective Team to sit down with Michelle's four-year-old daughter, Alexis.
The plan was to interview Michelle's daughter to find out what she knew about her mother's relationship with Jeremy. For example, did she witness any type of physical abuse? And what Alexis had to say was very interesting. Alexis told investigators that she did see her mom and Jeremy fight.
During the interview, she referred to Jeremy as, quote, a bad person who fights with my mom, end quote. She even said that Jeremy hit Michelle during a fight with a belt one time.
Now, this, of course, is a four-year-old's testimony. We don't exactly know what that means when she says things like, a bad person who fights with my mom. We don't know exactly what that means. Does it mean he's physically hitting her? Does it mean that the two of them are arguing at each other? They're equally screaming at each other?
It was no secret that Jeremy and Michelle weren't getting along. I think everyone in both of their lives can testify to that. Everyone that the police interviewed were saying that time and time again. But what's important here is trying to figure out to what extent did Jeremy and Michelle fight? Were they just yelling at each other? Did they just bicker over small things and big things?
Or were their fights more extensive and did they include physical violence? Armed with this new evidence, Investigator Rogers took his findings to Dr. Hoban, the state's medical examiner. Dr. Hoban agreed to review the evidence to determine whether or not Michelle committed suicide or she was murdered. And after reviewing the evidence, he determined that Michelle's death was, quote, probably a homicide.
According to an ABC News article, the medical examiner filled out an amended death certificate in which he switched the manner of death in Michelle's case from suicide to homicide. But this amended document was never officially filed.
According to Dr. Hogan, he never filed this amendment because he said that state officials instructed him to hold off until the state attorney's general office permitted him to. He was basically saying that he wouldn't file it until the state was ready to move forward with pressing murder charges against Jeremy.
Now, on a side note here, Dr. Hoban, the medical examiner, was later officially reprimanded by the state medical examiner's office for holding onto this amended document in his personal possession inside of his own home. This document, this amended death certificate, should have been kept at the medical examiner's office as an official document as per state procedures.
After Dr. Hoban, the state called in a second medical examiner to look at Michelle's case. But this time, the second medical examiner disagreed with Dr. Hoban. Based on the evidence that he reviewed, he believed Michelle's death was in fact a suicide and that the St. John's Sheriff's Department got it right.
So while the state is performing its investigation, the St. John's Sheriff's Department isn't happy. They don't like that the state is essentially trying to overrule the findings of their own investigation.
And in a 15-page review of the case, the Sheriff's Department attacked the state for their poor investigation. The report specifically cited that crime scene reconstructionist work on the case, where they said that the shell casings and where they were found wasn't in line with a suicide.
They were basically saying that the state's test didn't account for any of the variables inside of the bathroom, like where the walls were, the furniture, the ceiling. They were saying that the state's expert didn't account for any of that. So after the sheriff's department released their report, Jeremy filed a lawsuit against the Florida State of Law Enforcement, as well as investigator Rogers himself.
In this lawsuit against the state, he claimed that his interview with Rogers violated his civil rights and that he claimed he was illegally held for questioning by the state. Basically, Jeremy said that if the state decides to criminally charge him with Michelle's death, he'll move forward with a civil lawsuit.
And this move seemed to work in Jeremy's favor because shortly after the lawsuit was filed in March of 2012, the state informed Michelle's family that they would not be seeking criminal charges against Jeremy for her death. But that's not where this story ends.
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In June 2016, over five years after Michelle's death, there was an update in the case. Michelle's family received permission from a Florida court to have her body exhumed. The plan was to have the body exhumed so that a second autopsy could be performed. The family asked Dr. William Anderson, a forensic pathologist and former medical examiner of Orange County, Florida, to perform the autopsy.
During Dr. Anderson's examination of x-rays taken during Michelle's first autopsy, he discovered several injuries to Michelle's body that weren't noted in the first official report. He specifically pointed to two injuries on her body, which he described as fractures to Michelle's jawbone.
He believes the x-rays showed that Michelle's jawbone was broken in two pieces, suggesting a fracture. It's difficult for Dr. Anderson to say whether this injury is consistent with suicide or not. But the bigger question is, why was this injury to Michelle's jawbone left out of the official autopsy report?
According to Dr. Anderson, it doesn't matter whether this type of injury is significant or not. It still should be noted in the official report. It's just not good medical practice. Now I'm going to read a quote by Dr. Anderson. It's a little long, but I want to make sure that I get this right. This is what he said in an ABC News article. Quote,
The primary concern is what does the actual evidence show? And this actual evidence was there, was a gunshot wound to the mouth that put a hole in the tongue, but didn't do any other damage to the teeth, to the gums, to the floor of the mouth, the very soft tissue that basically wouldn't have been destroyed if there had been enough force from the blast to break the jaw.
So the only explanation that I can see that's responsible is that there was another force, a blow to the chin that broke the mandible prior to the time the gunshot wound was inflicted.
My findings are that there was a blunt force to the chin that rendered her at least some degree impaired her mental status from the blow and that the gun was then in the mouth and discharged and that the gun blast from the muzzle did not cause the fracture.
In other words, that blow would explain it. That blow to the chin, gun inside, would explain everything. He continued, It would explain the fracture. It would explain the fact that there's no expansion injury to the jaw. It would explain why the tissues are still in place except for the tongue. And there's nothing really in the findings that would contradict that theory. End quote.
What Dr. Anderson is saying is that it's possible a gunshot wound like this would cause a jawbone to break, but that's not what the evidence in this case tells him. This evidence was presented to the St. John's Sheriff's Department who investigated Michelle and Jeremy's case. And this is what Jeremy's attorney had to say about it.
If Michelle had been hit, as Dr. Anderson and Michelle's family suggest, you would expect to find bruising on her body. But there wasn't any bruising on the body. To combat this, Dr. Anderson reported to ABC News that he's conducted almost 9,000 autopsies over the course of his career. And according to him, if you die quickly, there won't be any bruising.
Even though Michelle's family had her body exhumed and had Dr. Anderson review the case where he found that Michelle's jawbone may have been fractured before the gunshot wound, the investigation into her death remains closed. The state and local sheriff's department refused to reopen the case, and Jeremy has never been officially charged with Michelle's death. So where does the case stand now?
Well, in 2018, a judge ruled that Investigator Rogers from the State Department of Law Enforcement had probable cause to detain and interview Jeremy. This same judge, in his ruling, dismissed the civil case Jeremy filed and ruled in the state's favor. Following Michelle's death and subsequent investigation, Jeremy Banks remained a deputy within the department.
According to his lawyer's statement, quote, Michelle's death has completely ruined his life, end quote. His attorney says that Jeremy will still leave the house and have people scream at him that he's a murderer and that he killed Michelle. Over the years, countless large news organizations have criticized the sheriff's department about how they handle the case.
The New York Times published an article that highly criticized the department for how they handled valuable forensic evidence. The article talks about possible wounds to Michelle's face that suggest they were defensive wounds. The New York Times also points out that Michelle's DNA and fingerprints weren't recovered from the gun that she allegedly used to kill herself with.
To this day, Jeremy Banks maintains his innocence. He adamantly denies causing any physical harm to Michelle. He says he didn't kill her. And again, he's never been charged. Now here's where things get a little stranger. In January 2019, police responded to another St. Augustine condo, a condo within the St. John's Sheriff's Department jurisdiction.
The condo allegedly belonged to a self-proclaimed internet sleuth who was researching Michelle's case. This particular internet sleuth seemed to believe that Michelle's death wasn't a suicide and that Jeremy was responsible for her murder. St. John's Sheriff's deputies were called to the condo on reports that this person's death was, quote, suspicious.
This person's death is reported as a homicide, but at the time of this recording, the case still remains open. Will the St. John's Sheriff's deputies be able to solve this one? Only time will tell. To share your thoughts on the death of Michelle O'Connell, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales. Do you agree with how the police handled the death as a suicide?
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