Episode 368

Sword and Scale

When the body of 33-year-old LaShawn Keith is found in a remote Michigan hayfield in November 2022, detectives are left with few clues—only

Key takeaways

• A single glove containing Ochoa's DNA became the critical piece linking him to the crime scene despite initial lack of evidence.

Main topics

• Cold case investigation
• DNA evidence analysis

Notable quotes

"If you go to a location with the intent of committing a crime, no matter what it is... and in that act, something goes wrong and someone dies, well, guess what? You're responsible for that."

Conclusion

The investigation concluded with all three men held accountable: Zachary Traynor and Brian Wimbley

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. I'm Speaker 3 (0:14) too drunk to even really rowing. What do I do? Oh my god. Like, this is actually happening right now. Speaker 1 (0:24) Episode 367. Episode 267. Episode 276. Who gives a shit? Will you quit correcting me? It doesn't really matter. Just listen to the goddamn show and enjoy it. Or don't. I don't care. Stop telling me things. I don't want to hear it. I am not having a good week. As you can tell. But that's not your problem. A duck keeps shitting in my pool, if you must know. I can't get rid of it. Anyway, um, that's not your problem. Let's get to some murder, shall we? Michigan State Police Detective Chris Hayward walks into a cluttered interrogation room in the Van Buren office. It's been 16 months since the body in the field was discovered back in November of 2022. He checks the thermostat setting and then starts preparing for his next interview. It's the one he hopes will finally explain how a dead man ended up in that field. Speaker 7 (2:24) Mr. Speaker 1 (2:37) Ochoa was taken into custody for what he assumes is a traffic violation. But... he won't be surprised by what Detective Hayward wants to discuss. He's hoping Ochoa can provide all the answers. Speaker 7 (2:50) Yes, we're hoping to talk to you about another case, one of our many cases we've got going. It's a case that ties you into it with some DNA. Speaker 1 (2:59) Detective Hayward has been doing this for quite a long time. He's served the state of Michigan for 25 years and is close to retirement. This case might very well be his last. But his years of experience taught him a gentler approach to interrogation. Speaker 7 (3:17) It was November Speaker 1 (3:27) 3rd, 2022, when he had been called to a field in Van Buren County, just east of South Haven. A man had called in and said that he found a body while scouting for hunting locations. The field wasn't easy to access, not by vehicle anyway. The only way into the field was a muddy path cutting through the woods. Speaker 7 (3:47) Based on some of the background that we've done on you, I kind of have my thoughts on, we do too, on our thoughts on maybe how this thing went down. But we still got to put it together. So yeah, your DNA was found right there at the scene. So you know which one I'm talking about? No, sir. Speaker 1 (4:09) In this field, next to a large pond was the body of a man. The first thing Detective Hayward noticed was the man's position. His body lay east to west directly between a set of tire tracks. Everything about the scene suggested that the body was dumped in that field. A theory further supported by the lack of shoes on the body. No one walks into a field in their stockings, especially in November. The man's t-shirt was pulled up under his arms as if he'd been dragged. His clothes were disheveled and badly worn. It was the kind of wear that looked older than the night he died. Speaker 5 (4:51) Because I ain't Speaker 1 (4:52) gonna Speaker 5 (4:52) lie, some of this stuff y'all talking about... A friend of mine did bring something up to me about something like that. Speaker 1 (4:59) The body was beaten and bruised, but the most noticeable injury was on the leg. His right leg was contorted in an unnatural position. It appeared his femur was broken. Identifying the body wasn't difficult. In one of his socks was his wallet, which contained his license. His name was LaShawn Keith. He was a 33-year-old, 310-pound, 6'1 man whose only relatives lived in Georgia. The only clues as to where he came from and who put him there were the light-colored sand covering his body and a single glove found nearby. Speaker 5 (5:42) You know, he said somebody that he knew needed something. Not like, you know, weapons or nothing, just like gloves and all of this. And the guy that he was telling me about, he said he do construction, so I'm thinking it's for a job job. Speaker 1 (5:55) Hayward hadn't mentioned a glove yet, but Ochoa did. It was a small thing, easy to miss, except it suggested that Ochoa already knew exactly which piece of evidence had brought him into that room. Speaker 7 (6:09) Frankly, we know more than what we're letting on here. I want you to be a little more at the front of it, because like I said, we do have it. Your gloves, I'll lay it right out there. Your gloves, your DNA is right there at the scene on those gloves, which you brought up so you already knew about that because them things got dropped and left behind. So you already understand that that, with no other explanation, that looks bad. Speaker 1 (6:35) At first, the whole scene where they found the body confused Detective Hayward. It seemed like a spot that you would have to know about to find. While forensic techs took impressions of the tire tracks and sent off samples from the gloves, Hayward tried to eliminate his first person of interest, the man who reported the body. His whole story about scouting hunting locations didn't really make sense. It wasn't even hunting season. Hayward interviewed him, as well as the people who lived nearby. He took the caller's vehicles and processed them for evidence. He spent the first few weeks of the investigation looking into this man, but eventually ruled him out. Now he finally had someone he knew was involved in front of him. Hayward continued his delicate approach. He didn't have to bully Ochoa. He only had to let him talk long enough to tell on everyone else. Speaker 5 (7:35) A friend of mine, he told Zach to contact me. So I was a little confused on it. And I talked to him and he said him and a buddy of his. And I'll be honest, this is his words. He said him and a buddy of his, they fucked up bad. And I'm like, what is you talking about? He said, we fucked up, fucked up. He told me that him and a guy got into it. He said, I think he was a homeless man or something like that. And him and his friend that he was with at the time, they had, he said they... beat on him, but they hit him with a sledgehammer and broke his bones or legs or something like that. Don't know if that was true, but he said they came back the next day for work because it was over by his job site. He went back to see if the dude was okay and he was still there, like still laying there. Speaker 1 (8:37) Initially, the DNA profile from the glove didn't match anything in the combined DNA index system, otherwise known as CODIS. But every once in a while, they would run it again. It took six months before it returned a match to Ochoa. But by then, no one could find him. Speaker 5 (8:56) He said the man was dead already, and he wanted help moving a body or something like that. Another reason he asked me to help him move that was because he had a cast on his hand. I don't know what happened. He said, uh... Speaker 5 (9:33) It Speaker 1 (9:34) took another nine months before detectives finally had Ochoa in an interrogation room. And Detective Hayward was right. He had a lot of answers. The more Ochoa talked, the more his story lined up with the evidence Hayward had been staring at for months. LaShawn Keith was a homeless man. His body was covered in soft dirt. His leg was broken. A sledgehammer was a new detail, but it lined up with the injuries discovered in the autopsy. In addition to a broken femur, LaShawn also had several broken ribs. He Speaker 5 (10:11) did have me help him move something. It was super heavy, but it was wrapped up. I did not know what it was. It was a carpet wrapped inside of that plastic that I was telling you about. The plastic is wide. It almost looked like it was for furniture. After a certain while, I wanted to know what I was moving. But yeah, that's what was going up the hill. His size starts unraveling more than I was able to see. I'm gonna be honest with you. Speaker 6 (10:36) I Speaker 5 (10:36) seen something slip out. It looked like fingers. I believe I saw fingers. There's no way around it. I know what a hand looked like. We all got hands. I don't know what color a body changed after so long of being dead, but the dude's skin looked dark when I seen a finger. And it didn't look like his skin was that color. Speaker 5 (11:18) When Speaker 1 (11:19) faced with the accusation of murder, Ochoa came clean. He claimed a friend of a friend accidentally killed a homeless man, and he helped move the body. But he was adamant he wasn't involved in the murder. Speaker 5 (11:35) We went, we was just driving down this trail, just driving and driving and driving. And then he hit a field, and then off to the left, if I'm not mistaken, it was water. It was like a lake or something, or a pond. In my belief, if I'm Speaker 7 (11:50) trying to believe everything you're saying, which I am. I can do a polygraph test. I believe you. Just hear me out on this one point. Yeah, I believe you helped load a body and go out here, but it seems like you're getting hung up on not getting out of the truck and helping. No, I got out of Speaker 5 (12:04) the Speaker 7 (12:04) truck to Speaker 5 (12:06) help him load it onto the truck. But he didn't ask me for help to unload it onto the truck. Speaker 7 (12:13) Did you personally kill this man? No, sir. Speaker 5 (12:17) Did you beat him at all? No, sir. I don't have anything like that. He told me they did it with a sledgehammer. Okay. Speaker 6 (12:25) And Speaker 5 (12:25) it was still in his truck. I seen a sledgehammer in the back of his truck. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. It was hard for me to get that image out of my head. Speaker 1 (12:34) Ochoa wasn't the end of the story. He was the beginning. This friend of a friend was someone he knew from school years ago. His name was Zachary Traynor. Speaker 5 (13:01) According Speaker 1 (13:02) to Ochoa, Traynor hadn't acted alone. Speaker 5 (13:14) So who do you think he was out there drunk with? Who was with him? It was one of his co-workers. Speaker 1 (13:18) He was most likely telling the truth, but the story wasn't complete just yet. Now they needed to find Zachary Traynor and identify this co-worker. Ochoa was the first piece of the puzzle. Now they knew how LaShawn got into that field. They just needed to know why he was murdered in the first place. After a year and a half of dead ends in the death investigation of LaShawn Keith, a DNA match brought Detective Hayward a man with answers. Ochoa only helped Zachary Traynor with body disposal, not murder. Finally, Detective Hayward had the first part of the story, but he couldn't just take Ochoa's word for it. I mean, would you take the word of someone who just admitted to moving a body? He needed a fact check, so he went to talk to Ochoa's baby mama. She essentially corroborated his story, even if a few details were slightly off. The details weren't really big enough to cast too much doubt on him. Besides, Ochoa led detectives right back to that field from a year and a half earlier. Now, Detective Hayward needed