Samantha Wanderer
Appearances
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
Right. Well, I like to say he's he's like the softest, tough guy. He's a Texas Ranger. He walked in snakeskin boots, showed us his hat, his hat, everything. Right. And he walked in with purpose. He really knows what he's doing. He's been working for a long time in law enforcement, but he is really down to earth and cared deeply about the people that he was trying to help.
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
He cared deeply about Carrie and he really was moved by the love of her mother, Linda, that she had to push for justice throughout this entire case.
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
Yeah, I think what always does it for me, I mean, obviously going through the archive, there's little nuggets you can find that are new and interesting. But I think what will always stick with me is the home videos and seeing Carrie interact with her daughters while she was alive and then seeing, thinking about how they're having to go through life without her now. I mean, that was hard to see.
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
Yeah, so I grew up Baptist and I had a lot of pastors and ministers that I was really close to in my church community. And just thinking about how someone in that position could not only murder his wife, but also have an affair and do that with two small children in the home that he knows that he should be taking care of.
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
Right. Right. And it was shocking to see even his demeanor change over the years, the different interviews we did with him. At first, he's so soft spoken. And then over time, you see him start to to shift the way that he acts.
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
Right. It's really interesting. It just shows the importance of archiving material properly, which, thank goodness, the production team who was on this story before me really archived this story well. So all of those old tapes we were able to pull back out, just different kinds of media, things I hadn't seen before as a Gen Z-er. I hadn't seen some of this media. Yeah, exactly. Beta tapes.
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
Takes you back. Eight full boxes. And that was in the court, right? I was allowed access to go into the court and go through the material myself, which was something that was also new for me. So I was going through piles of boxes, piles of papers, trying to find things we hadn't found before. And in doing that, we found some emails that we hadn't shown in our past coverage.
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
So we found emails that Carrie had sent back and forth with Matt and which you're able to see in the show.
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
Right. It was just under 200 pounds. It was roughly the weight of Carrie at the time of her death. So trying to find a dummy that was around that same weight that we could then transport to the scene, which we ended up doing it in a hotel room, was a little challenging.
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
Well, right. And thank God I had a firefighter help me get it into my car from the local fire department. Otherwise, I don't think I could have lifted it. And I can lift 200 pounds if it's on a barbell, but I can't lift when you see it in dead weight form. It's a lot heavier.
20/20
The After Show: Dirty Little Secret
Right. So John was supervising and timed Matt Cawthon as he went through and attempted to dress the dummy. And I saw him, as he was trying to do this in his full suit, get winded as he was trying to put it on. And he's in pretty good shape for his age. And being able to do it in two minutes and pull the dummy onto the floor would have been nearly impossible, it seemed.