Judge unseals arrest affidavit in Michelle Parker case

It is time to start our number two of Fox Orlando Live on Fox Local and on Fox 35. Thanks so much for joining us today. We want to go ahead and get right to it and check in about some of the big stories that have you talking on this Monday. So I want to go out to the Alert Center in the Fox 35 newsroom, check in with Fox 35 news anchor John Brown. John, thanks for joining us. Hey, Gary, good to see you. Yeah, a couple of very big stories taking place today. A major development here in a central Florida cold case that's been going on for about 15 years. As you probably know by now, Dale Smith Jr. was arrested several days ago in connection to the disappearance of Michelle Parker back in 2011. Well, they were in front of a judge today in Orange County trying to see if we're going to be able to see the arrest affidavit here. Bottom line is, a lot of people want to know why he was arrested and when he was arrested and the reason why those line up together. Marie Ettinger was in the courtroom, Garrett, and she has more on this one. So, Marie, a lot of people have a lot of questions on this. So you were in court or you've been watching this. How did it play out? Unfortunately, right now, I'm still among the people who have a lot of questions. The hearing today concerned a number of motions filed by both the state and the defense team talking about whether that affidavit for the arrest warrant would be unsealed. And right now, we know that it has said, or the judge has said, that it will be unsealed. The state had said they only wanted it hidden from the public and even from the defense and even from the judge until today. The state explained that they had a number of interviews left to conduct, just two of them. They expected to have that done by Sunday, and so they said they could unseal that motion today or that affidavit today. But up until then, they wanted no discussion of it. they wanted none of that information in the public. The defense team had been pretty upset about that for a number of reasons. One being that there has been 15 years of media coverage talking about their client leading up to this. Now he's finally been arrested. And the defense has said that if there's a reason for things changing at this point, then the public deserves to know. He says that the police and any other investigative team on this has been talking about it for all this time. And so he wants to be able to show the other side. He did talk a little bit about what he saw in the affidavit more broadly because he did get just a small chance to review it ahead of Dale Smith Jr.'s first appearance a couple of weeks ago. But he says since then, he hasn't been able to take a look at it. That's his other point that he had today. And I did ask him about that because the gist here is that he wants to prepare for this case. Right now, his client is still in jail, and they're waiting for a hearing to determine whether that'll remain the case or whether Dale Smith Jr. will be allowed out on bond. But because his attorney, Rajan Joshi, has not had the chance to review that affidavit more thoroughly, he hasn't been able to prepare for this case, and he hasn't been able to request that other hearing for that bond hearing. So that means that his client is just sitting in jail all this time, and they're not able to start work. Um, that affidavit, the judge said will now be unsealed because the state and state prosecutor said they only needed it until today. So we are hoping to get a chance to review that ourselves today. The other point of today's hearing was, uh, kind of related or sort of, um, tangential to this, uh, which is that the state alleges that the defense team had violated the order that left that affidavit sealed in the first place. It's all a little bit complicated. The gist of it is that they weren't supposed to talk about it. He did talk about it. How detailed or whether he actually violated the order is going to be up to a judge. There was evidence presented on both sides today for why each side says they think that he did or did not. He says that he talked only generally about things that have already been made public by police in the past, whereas the state is saying that he was told not to talk about this affidavit and that he did. So again, that's going to be something that the judge is reviewing later in her chambers. What we're hoping for now is just to get a chance to review that affidavit ourselves. And then the other thing that's going to happen moving forward is a question over how much police and attorneys on either side will be able to discuss this case at all or any evidence that is made public. The state says they don't want the attorneys or police talking about this with the media in any capacity for the most part. There was some discussion over how narrowly tailored that should be or whether that restriction is overly broad. That's something also that the judge is going to be reviewing today to see whether there will be a gag order placed on the investigators and on the people who will be litigating this case ultimately. John and Garrett. All right, going to be interesting to see what comes from that. And Marie, we'll keep our eyes peeled, too, for that affidavit and those details that will come out of that. We appreciate you joining us. Thanks for having me. And, you know, Garrett, one of the things when it comes to this case, too, we had heard, I know you've had some experts on, we've had some experts on, on the morning show is all these new advancements in digital forensics apparently are what cracked the case. So that may be the case, but we also know that he was planning to leave, but his attorney says it was routine for him to go down to Columbia. He was apparently seeing somebody down there. But why they arrested him and when they arrested him, I think are some of the big things we're waiting to see here. And then we'll know how it all ties together, at least according to the police evidence. Yeah, and we'll see how much of that comes from that document that hopefully we'll get our eyes on today. We shall see. Also, a big story I know we've been tracking since the weekend, this shooting in Tallahassee and a teenager today arrested, John. Yeah, and these are the ones that are, I mean, real head scratchers here. 15-year-old arrested in the connection to that mass shooting up in Tallahassee. It happened at FAMU's homecoming weekend. It was after the football game on Saturday night. The teen charged with multiple counts of attempted murder now. Twelve people hurt and six kids, six people still in the hospital at this point, one person in critical condition. And police say this is all just a fight that got way out of hand, as you can see right there. So, again, a fight and then gunshots. And come to find out, police say it's a 15-year-old who was arrested. Now, they say there could be more arrests coming. So we'll see where this one goes. But, wow, another one of those cases, 15-year-old arrested in this connection with this one. So that explains what's going on up there. Okay, and then UCF, what a weekend they just had. Man, oh, man. Continued to ride high after that amazing victory over the weekend. Now, in case you haven't heard about it yet, it's going to take too long to get you up to speed. You missed a lot over the weekend. I don't know, Garrett, I don't even know where we would start. If it's like somebody says, I missed the game, what happened? I'm like, you know what, forget it. You know what's funny, John? my my wife is who is a teacher she was chaperoning the uh the homecoming dance on saturday night so like i'm literally sitting there texting her like as things were happening and so like it was just such a roller coaster uh for that the last half hour or so the end of regulation and overtime it was wild so here's here's what you would have had to have texted here okay i'm gonna act it out you ready okay honey ucf has the ball first down for some reason the quarterback just spiked it even though the clock wasn't running then he threw it out of bounds then they kicked a field goal on third okay the kicker recovered it and was tackled so he should get to kick again but someone tore his helmet off now they're saying there is no penalty now they're saying a 10-second runoff okay we're going into overtime she'd have been like what Garrett are you drinking back i know and now we found out i mean now there's a lot of criticism of this and the big 12 officials there never should have been a 10-second runoff they should had another chance to kick that field goal so that was the first issue and then so all the other stuff that happened after that i mean get in line if you have a complaint because that would have been the end of it right there but you know so i was talking with some local sports officials and people over at ucf and gareth they have some interesting things to say now we haven't seen the tv ratings yet you saw the game here on fox 35 these ratings are going to be huge and here in central florida unbelievable i can't wait to see how many people watching this game but they said the web traffic. I did one of those analytics services. The web traffic for searches of UCF, UCF Knights, UCF football skyrocketed. That was cool. So everybody's searching to try and figure out, as our boss said, trying to figure out where UCF is. Should we rename it to University of Orlando? I don't know. That's somebody else's debate there. I like the idea. But UCF, that's what they were searching for. Also, our fan, the number of fans who came into town, because if you saw the images, there were a bunch of BYU fans that were here in town for this. So travel was great. And then not only that, but the stadium upgrades that finally got finished, that's what the national audience got to see. And then the overall experience of seeing a game like this, a big upset, biggest win in regular season history for UCF, everything went right. Oh, yeah, let's also throw in it was homecoming. And now we look ahead to the space game. So we got these cool uniforms. You got Baylor coming to town. I mean, you could not have written a better script than what happened here, Garrett, because this to me is just, if you want interest and attention on your school, and this is why athletics generates so much money. I mean, you could not have run a commercial for the UCF anywhere else that got this kind of attention, and everything went right for them to walk away with that victory, and they're riding high over there right now. A huge win. They should have every reason to celebrate that one. That is for sure that was uh that was a lot of fun and like you said setting up for another fun week uh with the space game on friday night that's one that we know uh that that ucf always wants to win so and the jerseys you know we got the info oh by the way it was a backup quarterback i forgot you forgot to text your wife it was a backup quarterback also that uh so and he's going to be starting again in against baylor scott frost making that announcement just about 30 seconds ago so we'll you saw my prediction right you saw my prediction i said 31 24 ucf on thursday it was then it would have been right there had they got it at the end anyway so close John, we appreciate you gambler all right, we'll see you soon Garrett, all right so a lot of fun uh with uh that one and let me give you a live look right now, this is uh inside uh the Trop ahead of Game Three of the World Series uh tonight uh as uh attention turns to uh to St. Pete and uh Tampa Bay uh and uh excitement already building for this one, we're going to go ahead uh and check in with Fox 13's Evan Axelbank who is joining us live right now from Ferg's in St. Pete right there near the Trop uh joining us live now, and Evan, who cares that it's just afternoon, sounds like folks are already excited for this one even though we're about eight hours away like Ferg's before any game at the Trop, I mean I've certainly been lucky enough to partake in that over the years numerous times and before the World Series, come on, you can't beat it. You got some fans here already hanging out, enjoying the day, and they're excited for an 8 o'clock, 8:08 first pitch I see some Rays fans over there. I'm also hearing some Brewers fans, but that's okay That's okay. Hopefully the only ten that are going to be in the ballpark are the ones here right now. I want to show you this. Look at this long road that uh this area has been on both sides assess dome that and that right there is the owner of the bar that I'm at right now Mark Ferguson 30 years ago when this first deal this deal first came together to build the Trop here they are on the World Series anyway, very cool a headline from 1995, I also want to introduce you Garrett, we met somebody from your neck of the woods. This here is Katrina. Katrina came all the way from Clermont to be here today. Katrina's been a Rays fan since the beginning, 30 years. Katrina, why did you want to come here at noon on a weekday to be here? Well, get out of work, of course, but we love the Rays. We want to be with the winners, and we're going to show them a thing or two tonight. We got a couple of losers over there, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to be loud and proud tonight. How important is this fan base and is this team to the people who love it? Oh, very much. I mean, they're a working class team. They're always a lot of integrity, a lot of heart when they play the game. And we just love that they're real. You know, they're real people. And so it just makes us feel good. They're not those high-priced players. They're us. They're the working man's team. Are you nervous about the rest of this? Does being down 2-0 put a crimp in your sails? Oh, no, no. You know, you show up the day, you play the game, that you bring that day and you put your best into it. And we saw from the first and second day games that they put everything they could into it. You know, if we got edged out just a little bit, there's nothing to tweak or nothing to change. Just keep playing your best ball. I think if they play a clean game today, they'll have a much better chance. How are you going to feel at 8:08 when those first pitches start to be thrown? very nervous and excited. I'm going to be yelling at the top of my lungs and cheering them all no matter what happens tonight. You mentioned the prices were just a wee bit high to get into the ballpark today. Just a wee bit. What's your plan? You're not going to be going to the game. You're going to be heading to, I think, your aunt and uncle's house. Aunt and uncle's house just a couple miles away. They're bringing in burgers and fries for us. We're bringing all the World Series merchandise and we're going to be cheering them on. Katrina, thank you so much for spending time with us we appreciate it so much uh garrett that's the scene here at ferg's right now people are going to be having a good time hopefully uh in a nice way and um look uh you know when freddie peralta takes the mound tonight he's got to do a one two three first and get the boys up to the plate yeah let's hope i uh i hope we see that it's gonna it's certainly an important one for the race tonight to uh to get back in this love that we're already seeing folks out and about Evan, thanks so much for joining us. It's certainly exciting to see all eyes in the baseball world now turning here to Florida. Yeah, good to see you as always.