It started with a fight between lovers
at a South Fourth Street home
and ended with two men charged with murder.
When the murder of Jamie Carroll was uncovered,
the story kind of just fell in my lap.
Joseph Banis is accused of killing
James Carroll and burying his body in his basement.
"In my head, gears started to turn,
slowly at first.
Joseph Banis,
Jeffrey Mundt,
James Carroll."
Joseph Banis is the first of two men
to be tried for Carroll's murder.
"Lovers' triangle.
Body in the basement.
Spooky old mansion.
Revenge. Drugs.
Kinky sex.
You couldn't make this stuff up."
Jury is expected to hear closing arguments today.
You are here to judge the guilt of Joseph Banis,
and Jeffrey Mundt and Joseph Banis
did this together.
They acted in complicity with each other
to commit the murder of Jamie Carroll.
Jamie Carroll spent six months
in a 50-gallon Rubbermaid container.
"Would a verdict make sense of it all?"
911 Operator Walker. Where is your emergency?
My ex-boyfriend is attacking me.
Can somebody help?
Please hurry.
Please.
They're coming.
I can't get rid of him.
The jury is getting ready
to decide the fate of a Louisville man
who could get the death penalty if convicted of murder.
There's no indication yet how long Mitch Perry
will let the jurors go tonight.
Once we walked into the jury room to deliberate,
we talked into the night up until about midnight.
Jurors deliberated murder suspect Joseph Banis' fate
for nine and a half hours last night
before the judge ordered them sequestered overnight.
It is an unusual situation where a jury would go out
and we would be here late into the night,
to the point where we had to come back the next day.
I think we essentially all agreed like from the start.
I feel like Jeff Mundt was more the mastermind.
A lot of us believed that it was Jeffrey
that was more guilty.
After it seems like we've been stuck in the clouds forever,
sunshine out there this morning, it's gonna last all day.
Good morning, I'm John Boel with some breaking news.
We wanna take you live downtown right now to the courthouse
where we're about to get a verdict
in the murder case of Joseph Banis.
Judge is speaking right now so let's listen in.
I was told you have a verdict, Mr. Foreperson.
-Is that true? -Yes, Your Honor.
Alright. If you could hand the jury sheets to Sheriff Brown.
Mr. Banis, if you'd please rise.
"Under verdict instruction number one,
we the jury found the defendant, Joseph Banis,
guilty under instruction number one."
It's against the rule but I let them hug there.
I mean, if a guy going for life, what the heck?
This might be his last time seeing his parents.
If we had had both of them on trial together,
our jury would've found them both guilty.
Absolutely, 100%.
"Dearest Kevin.
I just got my photos back
and decided to send you one along with this card
to let you know I've been thinking of you."
Joey Banis was my first boyfriend.
He writes letters to me
every single day.
"I still sometimes worry
that you won't want to be my friend in the long term."
This goes on for years.
I have shoeboxes full of letters,
like cards from him, all handwritten.
He used to always finish it with a peace sign,
a heart sign, and a smiley face.
"Peace, love, happiness, Joey."
So this is the first photograph I ever took with Joey.
This is when we fell in love.
A drag queen once told us, "You look like bookends."
I met him on a rainy November night
in a bank parking lot.
I'll never forget his face though, like,
just the first time I saw him through the car window.
Just like that slow looking over, like, "Is this him?"
And we were sitting in a car, 'cause that's--
our relationship was limited to that,
'cause he lived with his parents and I lived with my parents,
like, where were we supposed to go?
So every night we would just sit in a car
and just talk for hours.
Remember, don't mail it in, bring it in
and get your cash today!
He was very intelligent and that was something
that was really important to me.
Could carry a conversation and...
from an amazing, you know, from a really good family
and with a, you know, a great pedigree.
We decided we wanted to get our own place.
We found this cute little apartment
down on First Street.
There were no closets in that apartment.
The joke was, "Well, we just came out of the closet,
so I guess we don't need them anymore."
Louisville broke the record
for an all-time low temperature of minus 22 degrees.
One year Louisville got hit with a huge snowstorm.
We couldn't even go to work. Businesses were shut down.
It was awesome for us. You know,
be snowed in like kids in snow day in school.
We, you know, started, you know, talking about things
and... smoking weed.
He told me his story.
And his story was, he had spent time in jail.
He was a Deadhead.
He followed the Grateful Dead around.
And they found some like LSD in the car and he had a gun.
And I was like, "Wow, a gun. Like that's...
Why would you-- why would someone need a gun?"
But whatever. I was like, I don't-- I didn't care.
You know, like, "I-I love you.
It's alright, people-people make mistakes, right?
Now, you-- let's just, let's move on.
Let's move, let's move forward."
And then from there, it was, "Hey, like,
have you ever done LSD?"
And this is when I started to realize, like,
he doesn't have the switch that people have
of like, enough is enough.
One day, it was on Father's Day,
we did some LSD and I was feeling good.
We start-- he starts this argument, right?
He immediately gets angry.
He just reaches down and picks up a piece of glass
and shoves it in my arm.
He goes, "You see what you made me do?"
And I'm like, "Holy shit!"
And so I'm bleeding
and I very calmly just get up and I walk outta the apartment.
I walk next door and knock on the neighbor's door.
And the girl, she opens the door and says, "Damn."
I said, "Would you call the police please?"
So...
I get him kicked out...
and that fucker moves in next door.
It was scary.
This is the Victorian Ghost Walk.
It's a once-a-year, annual event.
People in Victorian attire and-and period costume
are staged to come alive as the spirits.
I'm gonna sweat a lot of it off, I can tell already.
It looks good in the beard, for sure.
"Because of the sensational murder trial,
more people wanted to come see the neighborhood
in spite of its sullied reputation."
Louisville is an extremely spirited place--
spirited with bourbon
and spirited around here with a lot of ghostly figures.
I do believe in ghosts.
So many people have lived and died in these houses.
People have said that they have seen
ghostly figures walking through my house.
So many people have been laid in the front parlor
for three days.
I think there were some sad, sad things
that happened in those front rooms.
My husband passed away in this house.
I found him lying on the floor.
I felt like somebody was pinching me,
which sounds so crazy.
But, uh, that's what he would've done,
just kind of aggravated me.
My house had a ghost in it.
My cat was the only one who could see it.
I never saw it. She was the only one who saw it.
But it was always the same place,
the same setup, the same time of day.
It was there. It was definitely there.
'Cause she would just walk in the room and sit down and...
There's a ghost here. There's one back here,
freaked out her brother.
The woman.
This used to be a brothel back here.
-That's what the landlord says. -I think it's a rat.
-I don't think it's a ghost. -No.
The landlord talked about it years ago.
Supposedly it's a woman.
That's what her brother said.
Gather around me, you see,
she will only speak to all of us
when she sees the near of thee.
Every 15 minutes, starting at six o'clock,
a group of 35 to 40 people leaves with a guide.
The baby's dead. She's not asleep.
These are not professional actors.
The reaper comes for souls to keep.
Sometimes it's their first acting gig ever.
Let the dead come alive!
The darker it gets, the spookier it gets,
and more witches come out.
Double, double toil and trouble.
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
My paranormal friends, they think one of the reasons
that this is such a haunted neighborhood is the fact
that we have so much stone and brick construction,
'cause they retain energy, they retain images better
than light, airy, uh, wooden constructions would.
Louisville is America's most haunted neighborhood
because when you have a tour guide
telling ghost stories three and four times a night,
the more you say their name, the more energy you feed 'em,
the more you're lifting their-their soul
and their essence, so to speak.
Well, last year they asked me to play Annie Whipple.
"'Dr. Anderson! Dr. Anderson!' I implored."
Two doors down, they say a ghost
of a governess they call Annie Whipple
walks up and down the staircase.
"And so...
my head drooped
and my hand dipped its pen in ink
and scrawled the message across the page.
And when I awoke,
the chilling words before me on the page said,
'You fool! I am not Dr. Anderson!'"
But I wanna make sure that I do her justice
because I only live a block from her.
It's been suggested that we have someone stationed
in front of the murder house
dragging, uh, a blue Rubbermaid tote
between the two of them.
But we think it's a little too soon to go there.
When I moved in across the street from the murder house,
I was taking a lot of baths.
I had an awesome clawfoot tub I spent a lot of time in.
I started noticing a figure walking back and forth
in front of the windows.
And so I thought, "Oh," maybe at first,
"this is somebody sneaking into that house."
But I kept seeing that person in the window.
Sometimes their hair is long, sometimes their hair is short,
and after a while I realized, that person's not alive.
I drew a sketch,
I put it on my Instagram,
and I said, "Yeah,
I think that's Jamie Carroll's ghost
trying to get my attention."
"I wanted to piece together
a more complete portrait of Jamie Carroll.
He had lived and worked for a while
in Paintsville, Kentucky,
where he ran a hair salon."
Jamie was just a great person.
Jamie would give you the shirt off his back
and not expect anything in return.
He was a mommy's boy.
He made sure Mom had groceries.
You know, he made sure that Mom was taken care of.
He would stop by and see me.
He always did come by and see me.
Sometimes I could tell he was not himself.
He was...
He was just-- he was...
I better not say that, but he was...
he was not himself.
Maybe drugs or whatever.
The name of Jamie's shop was Illusions.
We was there a lot at night 'cause, you know,
Jamie did a lot of his secret business there,
you know, making his money on the side there.
His international house of business.
He would mix all kinds of powder
besides hair chemical.
I tell you, he was our coke and meth dealer.
I mean, I can tell you from experience of me,
you know, I was addicted to meth for many years.
Started doing meth and coke,
15, 14-year-old, and with Jamie, you know,
Tyloxes, smoking weed,
doing ecstasy, whatever I could get with him.
Oh yeah, we've partied together. We've...
we've been stupid. I've been a stupid mother, but--
Not really a stupid mother. She was a fun mother.
But when I would party with Jamie,
I would carry around his little bag of his stash, whatever,
and I would sell it for him.
They'd be like, "Gimme a 10."
And I'd give 'em a little $10 bag or whatever.
He used to have those cute little meth bags
that had little cherries on 'em. You knew they were Jamie's.
You'd find one laying around in Paintsville, empty,
and you'd say, "That's Jamie's."
He'd tell people when we first walked in,
"This is my fag hag. You don't mess with her,
and everything's okay." He had your back.
You were protected when you was with Jamie.
Around here, Jamie was a protector.
He was a provider, but he had to get away from here
to make all the money
that he brought back into this place.
He thought that's the only way he would get accepted,
when he got here, was to provide for people.
It started with coke,
and, Lord, it flowed like
snow in the Alps there.
Someone introduced Jamie to crack,
and that's when it went downhill.
Jamie lost the salon. Jamie lost the house.
Jamie lost... Jamie lost Jamie.
And then it went to methamphetamine.
That's the last thing I know that he sold.
I can remember Jamie coming to visit me once
in my apartment
and...
I look over and Jamie's in the floor
and I said, "What are you doing?
Get up."
He said, "Bitch, I can't.
I'm high."
I said, "On what?"
I said, "Bitch, you're smoking cat litter."
She said, "Dude, your cat shits rocks, girl, okay," she said.
The meth that was around back then was stuff
that you had to go away from here and get,
so the town hadn't seen the stuff like that.
Only the gay community.
They call it high speed chicken feed,
because around here, you know, everybody on it,
it's just high speed when they're on it.
-How do you explain it? -That's about it.
Sums it up. You can-- you can do it all, and for days.
There's no rest. You don't need no rest.
It kind of decreases your inhibitions.
It lets you put what you feel is your best foot forward,
which it may not be, you know.
And that was what the crystal meth of that time
really done and took it--
That's how it took a hold
of the small communities around here.
This would be 13 and a half pounds of meth,
almost enough to fill a giant bag of cat food.
The drug epidemic
reaching every corner of Louisville.
The biggest meth bust in the city's history.
Over 34 pounds of meth.
What happened was crystal meth came in,
then the scene changed.
I can always tell when, uh, someone's doing meth.
Their eyes are darting a lot.
They move-- twitch a lot, move a lot.
Very "tweaky," is the word, a tweak.
They tweak a lot.
We used to call, uh, crystal meth was called Tina,
because Tina Turner's very popular
and she would...
You know, so we call it Tina.
"Are we gonna do some Tina?"
"Yeah, I... yeah, I think I'm gonna do some Tina tonight.
I'll be alright, I'll be-- I'll be-- I'll be fine."
You know.
You can tell by the teeth...
how the decay in the teeth and things like that from using meth.
They chew on their cheek.
Crystal meth made your inhibitions go away
and-and people were like,
"Yeah, I can take on the world," you know?
And a lot of times it meant,
"Yeah, I could take on the world."
I wanted to get high and have sex.
And so I got online and, um, me and Jamie hooked up.
He came over to the hotel room that I was at,
and we had sex on like 15 ounces of crystal meth
and, uh, had a blast.
During that time, I also met Jase online, um,
late night, after clubbing, um,
messaged each other off of Adam4Adam.
He and I were both high on crystal meth.
The first time Joey and I met, we did drugs,
which was very exciting sexually.
He loved, loved, loved
latex, rubber, gear, forced chemicals, bondage,
all things that were new to me that he got me to try.
I don't know the best way to describe it, but it makes--
it basically makes you incredibly horny.
He was into bondage
and I liked having threesomes.
That's how Jamie, Jase, and I ended up having that three-way.
I guess you probably would hear a lot of people say this,
but, like, I don't have a problem being high
and, like, knowing what's going on.
Jeffrey Mundt was one of those people
who absolutely loses touch with reality,
um, being high on crystal meth.
Jase is having a, I guess, toxic reaction
to something he ate or not being able to eat.
See, he's passed out in the bed
after trying to clean up the room.
They're off in the Kentucky Derby!
Attorneys deliver opening arguments
in a love triangle murder case.
"In May, right after the Kentucky Derby,
Jeffrey Mundt stood trial.
Joey Banis had already been found guilty
for the murder of Jamie Carroll."
Accused killer Jeffrey Mundt
scheduled to be in court today.
"Once again, Judge Mitch Perry
presided in the courtroom,
and familiar figures sat at the table for the prosecution."
Three men entered, two men leave.
"But the defense team had a markedly different makeup."
What he just told you is a lie and you'll know it.
"Dramatically, Romines went to the Rubbermaid storage bin
and rolled it to the side
as if to convey to the jury
that he and everybody else recognized it
as a cheap gimmick."
It's easy to defend a case
when your defense is the truth.
We'll prove to you before this trial is over,
Jeff Mundt is innocent.
I know Steve from some of the cases
he has in my courtroom. I call him "Big Money."
Yes.
Steve Romines is one of the more well-paid,
well-known criminal defense attorneys.
There are certain type of cases that I prefer not to take.
The first is, and, you know,
this is a sad reality how it is,
can they afford to defend the case properly?
He wins a lot.
Jeff Mundt is innocent
and we'll prove to you that they know it.
He acts exactly like a very high-priced lawyer should act.
They have had the evidence in their hands
and they have either ignored it, they have disregarded it,
or they have hidden it.
Doesn't come any more theatrical than that.
That's what you're paying him for.
You're gonna get the whole truth.
In fact, you're gonna start it this afternoon.
Joey Banis's own words.
Let's hear 'em.
I'm recording my death for the purpose
of informing all informed-- or all concerned
of my own willful suicide
and the complete non-involvement or culpability of anyone else,
specifically of my boyfriend, lover, life partner, and friend,
my one, Jeffrey Steven Mundt.
We felt like that was the-the single most powerful piece
of evidence in the entire case.
This includes killing someone.
It's a confession.
He's confessing to the murder, and he's confessing
to threatening Jeff about it,
to holding Jeff hostage, to violence against Jeff.
The police and the prosecution had this the entire time
and they had never seen it
until I showed it to the jury in opening statement.
You clearly had not reviewed his videos.
-No, sir. -Some of this information
would've been helpful in retrospect. Wouldn't it?
Sir, it would've been-- it would've been very helpful.
The reason why, and it's simple now, uh,
the police's forensic evaluation of the computers
were done with PCs,
and that video was filmed on a Apple or Mac.
I'm thinking, okay, well, this is-- this is a slam dunk.
You've got this guy saying he's-he's doing it,
he's gonna commit suicide, he's clearing his lover.
But then when it got back to the prosecutors
a few days later, they come back,
"Wait, there's a start to this."
I guess at this point, Judge, I would move
for admission of that, permission to play it.
And, Judge, let's-let's not make some misimpression.
There are three different videos.
-It's not like-- -Judge, can we approach?
There's three separate videos at this time.
The impression was given that there's--
that somehow we cut one of them off or whatever.
Three clips on the same day?
Yeah, but again, there-- it's not like we-we somehow
edited it out or anything like that.
The defense for Mr. Mundt only played a portion of the video.
And there is no doubt that they did not play the beginning part
that was not that beneficial to them.
Go ahead.
Hello?
Alright.
Okay, class.
So this is Joey's explanation of what he says happened
during the recording of that video.
"This is a check to see if the video camera
is recording correctly
and setting it up for the 'Suicidal Farewell.'
I was sick of Jase
and didn't want to be with him anymore.
Jase would not let me go.
He had threatened me and threatened my family.
The only way was to completely absolve him
of all responsibility.
So Jase wrote out a script and told me to read it in front
of the flip video camera connected to my computer."
"I am sorry for any pain that this causes."
Mm-hmm.
You can see who's in charge.
You can see who's making this happen,
and it, uh, it clearly is not Mr. Banis.
You have Mundt almost seeming to dictate
what Banis was gonna say.
So you're right back to the start
of who-who is guilty here?
Every time you thought you knew, you didn't really know.
A big twist today
as the trial continues for the second man charged...
Joseph Banis expected to testify against Jeffrey Mundt.
"The courtroom perked up
when Bailiff Brown escorted Joey Banis
in an orange jumpsuit to the stand.
As Banis passed in front of the defense table,
he gave his ex-boyfriend a strange lovesick look."
Banis agreed to testify in exchange
for prosecutors dropping the death penalty.
He was the prosecution's star witness,
just like Jeff was
the prosecution's star witness in Joey's case.
Do you swear and affirm the testimony you're about to give
will be the truth and the whole truth?
-Yes, I do, Your Honor. -Alright. Go ahead.
Introduce yourself to the members of the jury, please.
My name is Joseph Richard Banis.
One of the things that we intended to introduce
was Jeffrey's testimony from Joey's trial,
so that the jury could hear his testimony,
his version of events.
If the jury in Jeffrey Mundt's trial
would've been able to hear both sides,
they would've been able to see the whole story.
But the court did not allow that to happen.
What happened on December 14th, 2009?
We're all getting it on.
We were comfortable. We were in bed together.
The three of us started, you know, watching porn
and, you know, some music was on
and we were playing around in the bed and so forth.
Jeff suggested that he still had some money
that he would like to spend, and since the drugs were good,
could Jamie get him some more?
And Jamie said, "Oh yeah, sure."
When Jamie was gone,
Jeff asked,
"Do you think anybody would miss Jamie?
We could just take his drugs."
When Jamie came back in,
we decided we were gonna play together,
have sex together.
After we were done,
I got up to get dressed.
I heard a noise, and when I turned around,
Jamie and Jeff were struggling,
and they tumbled to the floor.
They started struggling. I was still thinking
this was some type of sex scene that was going on
because that was one of the things we did
involving in role-play.
Jamie yelled out, "Joey, Joey, help me."
Jamie started screaming, "No, Joey, no, no, no, please, no."
I saw blood flying
and I saw a knife in Jeff's hands.
Joey had a knife in his hand
and was slashing at Jamie's throat.
There was blood that was literally everywhere.
I mean, you could actually smell the blood.
And I don't know where Jeff pulled it from,
but he got a gun and it was the .38 Smith & Wesson.
Joey takes several steps back and grabs a gun.
And he shot Jamie.
And Joey shot him, I believe twice.
I thought Jeff was perhaps going to shoot me.
He said he would kill me and kill my family.
He would go and kill my family and kill my cats.
Threatening Jeff's cats.
That's now a crime in Kentucky.
Threatening the pets of someone
you're in a domestic relationship with
is now a crime, because that has shown
our evolving understanding of the dynamics
of domestic violence and sexual abuse.
Jase said that we were gonna wait till Home Depot
or Lowe's opened,
go there, get a plastic tub,
get some lime.
Joey was worried that it might start to smell,
and I suggested sprinkling lime.
I didn't even know what the hell lime was,
but he's familiar with it
from, uh, gardening
and from some movie where it's used
to cover up the smell of decaying bodies.
We got some type of cordage, some type of rope,
something to help, you know, close the box
that he was gonna be put in.
Jamie's body had gone into rigor mortis.
And I held the body.
He sledgehammered Jamie's, uh, kneecaps.
Joey hit him with a sledgehammer
so that the bones broke
and I guess the muscles relaxed and moved, whatever,
and he was put into the container.
I don't remember it being a particularly difficult task.
Jeffrey's testimony from trial one,
it did paint him in more of an accurate light.
He was cold, self-serving, and calculating.
And because we weren't able to show the real testimony,
the real him in that way,
I think that that hurt us.
Alright. Let's keep going.
Mr. Banis, you are a thief,
you're a drug dealer, you are a murderer,
and you are a liar, correct?
No.
Now, you told Detective Lesher
the night that you were arrested
that he worked for the NSA
and was a secret agent slash assassin, didn't you?
Mr. Mundt had told me that in the past
he had worked for the US government
and he told me that it was for the NSA.
You're just making stuff up, aren't you?
How-- your client is the one who told--
where did he get a bullet in his head
-in Bratislava? -The NSA--
That's why I never knew what to believe or not to believe.
You know what not to believe?
-Okay, tell me. -You.
A lurid Louisville murder trial took yet another turn today...
Plenty of other lurid details coming out.
"Conroy continued to work her way
through the evidence, then brought up the sex tape."
Have you reviewed, prior to your testimony here today,
a video where Joseph Banis and Jeffrey Mundt
are engaged in sexual relations
after the murder of Jamie Carroll?
Yes, ma'am. I did.
It's about 12 minutes long.
May stop it before the end of it.
Judge, may we approach before this one is played?
This is designed to do nothing more
than to inflame the passions of the jury.
How graphic is it? How much do you intend to play?
Not-not much. I mean, this is not necessarily
what I want to do on a Wednesday afternoon,
but it's about the nature of the relationship.
The evidence is what the evidence is.
The-the argument that a sexual relationship
between an abused person and an abuser
somehow influences that relationship
is-is-is absurd.
The only purpose is
we have straight people, straight men on the jury,
and it's to inflame the jurors against Mr. Mundt
with this graphic sexual testimony.
I've asked the Commonwealth
if there's any way to avoid the graphic nature of this.
-There's not? -Not on this one.
I'm going to allow you to do it. Alright.
It's raw.
It is raw.
-You're gonna ride it, Joey? -I'm gonna ride it
or else you're gonna fucking pile-drive it.
I might be able to do that.
"Ears reddening, Jeffrey Mundt
looked straight ahead for the entire length of the clip
as the jury and everyone else in the courtroom
watched Joey and Jeffrey have sex on the screen."
-Who's your bitch? -You're my fucking bitch.
-Huh? -Joey's my fucking bitch.
My little bottom bitch.
He's your what?
Little bottom bitch boy.
Can stick my cock in his ass whenever the fuck I want.
Ride him.
Make him ride my fucking cock.
Hmm?
Jeff doesn't appear distressed.
Jeff isn't crying.
Jeff isn't begging for-for Joey to stop.
You need to lift your ass up.
If anything, it was Jeffrey Mundt
who was directing what was going to happen
and calling the shots.
They wanted to show that Jeff was a top
and that therefore he could not have been
the victim of an abusive relationship.
Which any-- that's bullshit.
You like videotaping your bitch?
Fuck yeah.
Everybody that was in the courtroom was texting,
"They're playing porn in division three,
you better get here now."
After the first... ten seconds or so,
it was like, "Okay, we've seen enough.
Do we really have to see all of this?"
You would've heard a pin drop.
It was such an uncomfortable moment.
The little bitch bottom boy you are.
We stopped it before Jeffrey Mundt said the N word.
We thought that that would be crossing the line
and risk offending people.
Alright. I need a break.
It's very hard to defend somebody you believe is innocent
when there are salacious facts.
I'm not sure why sex is any more offensive
than stabbing and shooting a person.
The dominant narrative here was that Jeff didn't participate
in any of this willingly.
"Romines then had LeTonia Jones on the stand,
an advocacy programs administrator for nine years
with the Kentucky Domestic Violence Association
in Frankfort. She established..."
"...that Jeffrey Mundt displayed all the signs
of a typical battered spouse."
I was called as an educational witness.
My purpose was to educate the jury
about the dynamics of domestic violence.
Putting on that evidence was important
so that the jury would know the truth
of what a traumatic, abusive relationship is.
These relationships
where there is violence
and where power and control sits at the heart
don't make a lot of sense
to people who are not inside of those relationships.
Her relevance to the whole thing
was marginal at best because
she was talking in theoretical domestic violence terms
and not necessarily about anything specific to this case.
So if I came to you and I said,
"Well, this guy claims he's being battered,
but I've got a video of them having sex--"
Your Honor, may we approach?
It would be improper for an expert of any type
to testify to the ultimate issue.
That would be the legal phrase.
So to ask, "Is Jeffrey Mundt a victim of domestic violence?"
You can't ask her that.
I'll withdraw the question, Judge.
Um, no. May we approach? Thank you.
I want an admonishment to the jury.
He did that on purpose, and you know that he did.
I want an admonishment.
Ongoing sexual relationship
is not controversial.
It's not cutting-edge theory.
It is accepted in this area of expertise.
-Counsel? -Yes, sir.
You became very close
to simply defying this court in an inappropriate fashion.
The question was so suggestive
of the facts and evidence in this case.
I cannot imagine why you did what you did.
-Alright, step back. -Sorry.
Ladies and gentlemen,
please disregard that last question and answer.
The facts of this particular case
will be decided by you and you only.
You can't un-ring a bell.
When a judge tells jurors to forget what they just heard,
if they were bored before the judge said that,
I guarantee you that they're interested now.
Both sides rested their case today.
-It was day nine... -Closing arguments
are currently underway.
If you are a victim,
if you are a witness, if you are a hostage,
you act like it.
It's the final chapter in a twisted tale
-of sex, drugs, and murder. -We wanna take you live
right now to the courthouse
where we're about to get a verdict.
Mr. Mundt, can you stand, please?
Alright.
"For murder, we the jury found the defendant, Jeffrey Mundt,
not guilty."
A jury deliberated for nearly eight hours
before finding a Louisville man not guilty
of killing his former lover and drug dealer.
I was just dumbstruck.
Like, how in the hell did a jury
find him not guilty of murder?
They beat him with a sledgehammer,
they stuff him in a Rubbermaid in their basement,
and for six months they live happily ever after.
I still can't believe that he's not guilty.
Jeffrey Mundt was convicted of lesser charges...
Convicting him of robbery and tampering...
Sentenced to three years for robbery
and five years for tampering.
The wrong message was sent here,
which is that you can, in fact, get away with murder.
The jury simply got it wrong.
What happens in a courtroom? It's about winning and losing.
Very rarely do we truly get
an honest view of what happened.
And that, for me,
makes it difficult to trust a system
that we would call a justice system.
Follow me.
So as we walk down the steps here,
this basement is what I use for storage of my files.
This was one of the exhibits that we showed at trial.
Looking at that individual, that is not the individual
that presented himself to that jury.
We know that's the real Mr. Mundt.
That's the real Jeffrey.
I was the only one that ever visited Jeff in jail.
He kept promising me that he would tell me the full story,
but he didn't wanna talk about it there.
Of course, in jail, it's being recorded and all that.
"Mundt made parole a year after his trial,
having served just four years of his eight-year sentence."
And when he got released,
we went and picked him up
and brought him back to Louisville.
-And had lunch with his parents. -To his halfway house.
No, we had lunch at, uh, Red Lobster.
And then that was it.
After he was paroled and basically served his time,
he kind of disappeared,
and no one even knows where he is today.
So you don't know where he is.
-Last I knew was Baltimore. -Last we heard, Baltimore.
And he told me that he got a job at a movie theater
and he would-- he wouldn't tell people he was from Louisville.
And then slowly he stopped talking to me
and then he ghosted me.
Yeah.
And I think that's what hurts the most.
To think how I tried to be such a good friend
and then all of a sudden, nothing.
-Can I ask you a question? -Yeah.
Have you been able to-to locate Jeff?
No. I was gonna ask if you...
do you know where he is?
See, that's a lot of stuff that I just am not...
and I don't mean to be a stick in the mud
and I don't mean to be a lawyer's lawyer, uh,
although I'm kind of proud of being that. Um...
-I gotta go. -Yeah.
I'm sorry. I hope I wasn't too circumspect.
Much like reading a book about it,
Jeff's case is over for me.
Much like a lot of clients, I don't keep up with him
when-when my case with him is over.
I assume he's doing well.
So the question is, where is Jeffrey Mundt?
Your guess is as good as mine,
but I will make an agreement with you.
If you find him, you let me know.
And if I find him, I'll let you know.
This is a prepaid collect call from...
-Joseph Banis. -...an incarcerated individual.
This call will be recorded and may be monitored.
Were you surprised that Jeffrey just disappeared?
Uh, no.
Doesn't surprise me that he could stay off the grid,
uh, build up a new identity, any of those things.
He told me that he did that type of stuff.
Obviously I was disappointed because I'm in prison
for something somebody else did.
The laptop that we actually have here
is a digital copy of Joey's laptop.
In this case,
with all the videoing they did of each other,
it was overwhelming because, at that time,
there was no digital forensic unit
of the Louisville Metro Police Department.
There wasn't a way to sift through all of that information.
There's a lot of files, over 700,000 files.
It was a one terabyte or tegabyte or...
It was a big one.
I clicked on every link that I could go through,
but could not access anything on a Mac.
I guarantee you there's information on his laptop
that people haven't seen.
I guarantee you that.
You know, I had all kinds of little recording devices,
and I was always trying to get him to, uh,
admit what really happened.
He was cagey as hell because, you know, I mean,
he's in the background
and not saying very much of anything.
And what fucking-- what-- why-why-why is--
He kept on threatening me saying, uh, "Joey, uh, you'll--
you can never say anything to anybody about this
because nobody will ever believe you
because you have the criminal record, and I don't."
It was, uh, it was not a healthy relationship.
Joey missed me or something
and wanted me to come back after Glow,
and they had that new house in Old Louisville.
And then I was Joey's assistant there for a while.
When I first went to Joey and Jase's house,
they took me down to the basement
and to show me where the laundry room was and stuff.
They tried to give me that guy's clothes
and said that the guy had just basically left them there
and went back home.
He didn't want 'em, I guess,
and they were a little big on me, obviously,
um, so I was like, "No, I don't need 'em."
It was kind of traumatizing to, like, think about,
like, that I was there feeding cats
and there was a dead body downstairs,
and I just didn't know it yet.
You know, that could have been me,
and the way that, um, my life was going then,
it almost was me.
We started to hook up a few different times.
But I would pull back because it just seemed weird,
the two of them, their connection.
Something weird was going on there.
Like just the way they talk to each other.
You could feel the tension between the two of them a lot.
It's not closing.
Every single bedroom had its own padlock.
Like the key ring was just a bunch of padlock keys.
Every single door had its own padlock.
It was, um, very, very weird.
Jeff had lost his job at the end of January,
after the murder,
and never put in a résumé for another job.
You know, he was supposedly renovating this house, uh,
turning it into a bed and breakfast.
But basically, he was in serious debt.
If they were planning to fix it up, they hadn't gotten far.
That house was in complete disarray.
It-it does seem like they were desperate for money.
Here.
They had the telltale signs
of two people that were living daily high on meth.
I mean, they did a tour of their apartment
showing off their counterfeiting process.
No one does that unless you're just
completely out of your mind on meth.
I'm all about drug use. I love drugs.
You know, a little theft by deception, sure,
I've done that as well, but guess what?
I'm not a computer programmer.
This was something he was totally into.
He was really good with computers.
He was really good with online stuff
and figuring all kinds of stuff out.
I kept feeling that he was going to turn on me
and try and throw me under the bus for everything.
And so there was-- there was a time
when I started documenting, um, his criminal activity,
so, uh, particularly the counterfeiting and stuff.
We'd made all this counterfeit money
and we're going up to Chicago
to turn counterfeit money into real money.
We got to the, um, Hyatt Hotel on Wacker Drive in Chicago
and I asked Joey if he had any ones to tip the valet with.
And then I got change for the valet.
He passed off a bill to, uh, the guy in broad daylight
up there, the valet.
He was so spun out on meth
that he grabbed stuff that he wasn't-- basically trash.
He grabbed some tester bills
that had been washed
and scrubbed and printed on over and over again
to test the color and passed it to the valet.
Breaking news. This is WAVE 3 News.
Two Louisville men are behind bars in Chicago now
after police found $50,000 in counterfeit cash
in their hotel room.
I couldn't believe it was the same Jeff I knew.
-It didn't look like him. -He didn't look happy.
He looked angry. Well, obviously, he just got...
-Arrested. -...arrested.
They also found weapons, fake IDs,
and a suspected date rape drug.
I grew up a sheltered life.
I don't know that much about drugs or anything.
And, you know, people would say, "You didn't know?
I mean, he's always sniffling."
I'm like, "Well, he said he had allergies." You know?
We get arrested and I knew that my-my bail would be higher
because I had a felony record.
And so I told the detectives
that he didn't know anything about it,
that it was all my stuff.
I was trying to get him released on a lower bond
so that he could come and bail me out.
So the funny thing about being scared of me
doesn't really hold water because, you know, I mean,
I was basically someplace where I couldn't get to him.
I couldn't do anything, he could have left me in jail.
So, anyways, he came back
and paid $20,000 to get me out of jail.
I come back to Louisville with him
and it becomes just a-a-a terrible,
terrible situation where there's no resolution.
Jase!
What is wrong with you?
What did you take or what did I do, Jase?
911 Operator Walker. Where is your emergency?
Please, 1435 South Fourth Street.
My ex-boyfriend is attacking me in my house.
-Please come immediately. -Who is attacking your door?
Joey Banis.
While I was sleeping off, um, being up days on meth,
he took my keys, my phone, my wallet.
Went into the guest bedroom,
and, um, called 911
and, uh, took a hammer, banged it on the door,
and made, you know, background noises.
Please somebody help. I can't get rid of him.
I'm scared.
Told them that his soon-to-be ex-boyfriend
was trying to kill him-- which I wasn't, I was asleep--
and they should break into the house and arrest me.
So the domestic run comes out, they make the run,
separate the parties.
While they're separated,
Mundt says to one of the officers
that Banis killed a guy.
The officer comes downstairs and tells Banis,
"Man, your boyfriend must be really mad at you.
He just accused you of killing somebody."
Anyways, he won't come out of the bedroom
until I'm in cuffs.
When I come out of the bedroom,
he says, uh, "He's killed someone."
And at that point I was like, "No, no, no, no, no.
Yeah, I didn't kill anyone.
He killed the person. You know,
and I'll be happy to take you the-- give you the story."
So I went down to the, uh, homicide department
and I started giving a statement.
So he comes down and he tells Lesher
everything about what happened with this,
but he puts it all on Mundt.
Police were definitely not inclined to believe me.
You're not making this stuff up.
This is not a lie to get back at him because
you were arrested for...
-No. -...a different crime.
Mundt came in there and, uh, acted at first
like he didn't know anything about the case
or the murder or the body or anything.
And then when he was about to be given a polygraph test,
he said that he couldn't take it
because he'd been lying to them all along.
The one thing I keyed on was,
Mundt talks about that Banis slit the throat.
Banis says that Mundt stabbed him in the neck.
Doesn't talk about slitting the throat.
If you look at the autopsy report,
it looks like they're stab wounds.
-Stab wounds. -Not-not a slit.
That might seem like not a big deal.
I think that is a huge deal.
Why is that not part of the story?
I don't know. You all are writing a story, not me.
I didn't write the story.
I'm literally just reading what's in the case file.
I've learned over the years,
you know, my time in homicide
and work in narcotics, that,
your motive, you don't really have to kill somebody
to rob 'em of their dope and their money.
Especially like, as brutal as what that was.
This was extremely personal.
Why would you do this?
I mean, there is no real motive for this.
Jamie was a low-level drug dealer
who probably had a couple hundred dollars
on him that night.
He probably didn't have enough drugs
to make it through the week.
We had a theory.
I mean, the killing occurred during the middle of a sex act.
I think it was a thrill.
This is a prepaid collect call from...
-Joseph Banis. -...an incarcerated individual.
This call is not private.
If you believe this should be a private call,
please hang up, follow facility instructions...
Ultimately, uh, I mean, it all comes down to this.
Mundt and-and-and Jamie,
they were both there to fuck me.
We had a couple three-ways.
Um, I was normally restrained.
Um, they were both normally, you know, topping me.
Jase had actual rope that he would use to tie people up.
He knew a zillion different rope-tying tricks
and knots and all that type of stuff.
And, um, it was fun.
But Mundt had to go to work in the morning,
and it infuriated him
that Jamie and I stayed behind
in his, Mundt's house,
um, in his bed, uh,
continuing to get high and have sex
while he had to go to work.
That was the-the, uh, seed that germinated
into, uh, the jealousy that caused the murder.
When the murder actually occurred, I was restrained.
You know, when I was tied up and-and Jamie was asking me,
"Joey, help me," and I couldn't help him,
I mean, I've had nightmares about that for years.
I was plagued by the sound of his voice
asking me to help him.
And, you know, I-I just--
I couldn't do anything.
You have one minute left.
Ultimately, my friend died,
'cause Jamie was my friend.
Um, and I feel terrible about that.
I have pictures of him,
I think seven days before the murder,
looking over my shoulder.
We were both smiling
and just like, we were friends.
I hate Mundt because, ultimately,
he killed Jamie and really destroyed my life too.
-Um-- -Goodbye.
Why do you think Joey asked me to reach out to you?
Well... I guess because
he wanted someone to paint him in a good light.
Here's what's fucked up.
How long was that body there?
Seven months?
And neither one of them
took the opportunity
at some point to say, "Hey,
I'm living with crazy,
and, uh, and there's a dead guy in my basement."
Neither one of 'em?
Fuck both of them.
What everyone forgets is that Jamie Carroll...
died, and so I decided, like, "I'm gonna do it for him
'cause he doesn't have a voice, and I do."
From what I've gathered, the body
was very well maintained because of the lime.
I'm glad it preserved him.
I'm glad he raised enough hell from that little box so...
we could get him out.
Get him brought to where he could be laid to rest properly.
I'm baffled.
I'm confused.
I don't know what made my friend enter a room
with two people that she barely knew,
and not come out.
Jamie Carroll should be alive,
and it doesn't matter, drag queen,
drug dealer, or whatever.
I can be in a situation that I think...
I'm just doing what I do,
and not be aware
of the danger that might exist
because of the toxicity in the relationship,
and then find myself in a really dangerous situation.
Yeah. That's the lie we tell when we say it's just about
those two people or it's none of my business.
What happens behind those closed doors
finds its way into public spaces
and so it puts us all at risk.
That's the saddest part.
The monsters really do exist.
But we create our own,
with the drugs
and the lies and the bullshit that we choose to live.
"There were many things I did not know,
did not understand.
What it all meant.
Why people did the things they did
or said the things they said.
What lingered behind the walls of 1435 South Fourth Street
and what really happened in the dark basement.
What lurked in the dark room found in every human mind."