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I'll be honest. When we first started reporting this story, I thought it would be more of a whodunit. That information would eventually come out about Henry, Jasmine, anyone? Perhaps some mystery conspirator who would point to a revelation that blew the whole thing open. Or at least that we'd stumble on some motive that turned the accident story on its head. But that hasn't turned out to be the case. In fact, the lack of motive for Jasmine anyway, is so glaring that people have been grasping at straws to come up with one since it happened. The most popular, totally unsubstantiated but widely tossed around wild guess is that Henry came on to Jasmine or after her, and that she was fighting him off somehow with his own gun, which he gave her or she wrestled away. It makes no sense. Still, if that were true, if this was self defense, surely Jasmine would have just said that from the outset.

Exactly. If that happened, I wouldn't have done 1 second in jail. It would have been self defense. Case closed. And people have said that, can't you change your story and say that he did that? And I'm like, no, I'm an honest person. I'm just telling you exactly what I know from that night, what's happened. Yeah, Henry never tried to rape me or try to touch me like that at all.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this terrible mystery and looking at the evidence. And for what it's worth, I have no reason to doubt the story Jasmine's telling in the absence of any new facts, to suggest an alternative version of what happened that night, that it was just a freakish accident of the worst possible kind, it's just the most plausible explanation, the only one that makes any sense, as much as some people refuse.

To accept it, and I just wish they would, because then they could grieve properly. They think it was something bigger than it was.

Henry's family especially, they show up to.

Every single one of the hearings and they're always wearing shirts that say, like, justice for Jamut, and they're bawling out in the courtroom.

They appeared often in the media, too.

I still believe that she should still be charged for murder.

She have committed the crime, and our.

Family want justice for the death of my brother.

I can certainly understand where the family is coming from. It's likely I'd feel the exact same way if I were in their shoes. The possibility that this was just some random accident, it's just so unsatisfying and so unfair. It's far easier, I think, to have someone to blame, someone to punish, especially when that someone has been constantly in their faces in the news. Jasmine gets it, too.

I feel so bad. Like, I want to talk to them, but I know I can't because they could go ahead and say that it was, you know, I'm in breach of my bail somehow for disturbing the peace or something. I'm just scared. Like, I don't know what to say to them. I can't take away their pain. I lost a friend that day. They lost their brother. It's horrible, horrible what happened.

There will be a trial and a judgment, eventually a conviction, especially if a judge were to give Jasmine a prison sentence, would have a huge effect on her future, and especially on the future of her kids. She could lose them permanently. That's not a stretch to imagine. As it was, she hadn't seen them in months. Jasmine also had this low grade worry, a simmering fear that some surprise awaited her in court. It felt to her that everyone, the Ashcroft, the authorities, the press, were somehow all aligned against her.

If they have their way, they will absolutely put me in jail. So the things that I've seen in my disclosure are concerning and terrifying, because Andrew has told me that he's going to put me in jail for murder. And I said, I'm not going to jail, Andrew. I said, it was an accident, and I will not go to jail. This is a fine. This is an accident. And he said, oh, that's what you think? He said, you're going to jail for murder. They're going to up your charge.

Through his attorney, Andrew categorically denies ever saying this to Jasmine and says that this would be, quote, at odds with our clients, immediately instructing and paying for the leasing lawyer in Belize to assist Miss Harden. But Jasmine is talking about a conversation for more than a year after the shooting, long after Godfrey Smith dropped away, and Andrew became more enemy than Allyehdeh. Anyway, regardless of what he said or she said, we're about to get into the facts on the ground, or in this case, on the pier. From campside media, this is white devil, and I'm Josh Dean. Episode ten Better call Dickie. Let's accept, as all evidence suggests, and the prosecutor has asserted, that Henry Jamaats death was what Jasmine Hartin said from the start a terrible accident. How exactly did it happen? And I don't just mean the gun going off. I mean before that. Why were Jasmine Harden and Henry Jamat together in the first place? How did these two lives collide in a way that ended one and ruined another?

I had met Henry on the island, and he was friends with Andrew. He'd been to the house, like, once or twice for dinner, and he was. Yeah, Andrew knew him before I did.

The spring of 2021 was an exciting one for Jasmine and Andrew. Alaya finally was going to open, and the two of them, resigned to life as business partners, not romantic partners, were already scoping properties in Turks and Caicos, as well as inland in Belize for their next venture.

I had been checking out the property for the potential jungle lodge, and I ran into a couple friends that happened to be stopping by where I was staying. And the one guy said, it's my wife's birthday.

There was a party, and Jasmine was persuaded to go. They even had a room for her to crash in.

So it was about, like, midnight. I went to go settle into the room, and a guy came up to me, and he was like, you're looking good. And he was, like, coming up to me, trying to touch me, and I was like, whoa. Get your hands off. And then he's like, come on, don't play hard. Don't play hard. And then he pushed me down onto the bed and got on top of me, and I fought him. And then I was like, screw this. I'm not sleeping here. And now I feel trapped. I'm alone. And so the only one I could think of calling was Jamat, Henry Jamud.

This local police superintendent she knew socially from when she was working on San Pedro, who'd recently been promoted to a new job in the jungle, where he was heading up the Cayo station. So Jasmine knew that he might be nearby.

I didn't know Henry that well. We were acquaintances. I considered him a friend. I could call him if I needed help with anything. He was there. He was kind to me.

This party, it was still at the height of COVID in Belize.

So I called Jamette, and I said, hey, listen, I know it's, like, after curfew, but, like, is there any way you could pick me up and I could try to get a room somewhere, because I really don't feel safe. So he sent people. He sent, like, a dispatch to come pick me up.

These cops took Jasmine to Belmopan, where Henry was, and then he drove her to Belize City to get the boat back home to San Pedro. Henry also gave her some advice.

He said, you need to get a protection. He's like, because this guy could have raped you. Anything could have happened. And he's like, you need to learn to protect yourself. So he had me handling his gun in the passenger seat of his car, getting familiar with it. He told me that he was going to have someone contact me to get a gun for me.

Fast forward a few days to May 22, five days before the shooting. Jasmine says that Henry asked for a favor in return. He wanted to come out to San Pedro for some R and R. He's.

Like, I need to get away for a couple days. Can you guys hook me up with a room? So I got him room number one, which was ground floor, beachfront, right in front. My house was behind that room in.

The same complex grand colony next to Aliyah.

I saw on his facebook he's finally single. And so you could tell he was having, like, a breakup with his common law wife.

Jasmine's assumption was that this was a trip to get a bit of space in the midst of a breakup. He arrived on the Wednesday.

We had just opened Aliyah. We had a lot going on, so I didn't have time to see him. And then on the Thursday the 27th, we were going to a friend's birthday party. So of course, Andrew and I had to go. For, like, the image of it all.

Though we know now that Andrew and Jasmine were not together at this point, it wasn't public information.

It was all of his Miami friends, and it just wasn't my scene. So I left. I went home. He came in, like, ten minutes after me. Andrew arrived back to the house. Henry had been writing me, and he's like, what's going on? Like, you and Andrew haven't been here. I've been here since yesterday. You better come have a drink with me. And I said, andrew, we have to go have a drink with the man. And he's like, no, you just go. I'm tired, and whatever.

Jasmine went outside to meet Henry. She brought an open bottle of wine from her fridge and two miniature bottles of fireball, the cinnamon liqueur. Henry, she says, had been drinking all day. He was toasty.

So it was just Henry and I sitting on the front having a drink. And then it was a full moon, so that's when we decided to go to the pier and look at the full moon. And then, yeah, he went back inside to get his weapon.

She says that Henry wanted her to get comfortable with a handgun so that she'd know how to handle one when she got her own.

He had me handling the weapon again, unloading it, like, unloading the magazine. And I did. I had unloaded the whole thing. It was empty. The clip was totally empty. And he had the bullets to his left side.

This detail about the bullets, it's important and would be a big focus of the trial if the case were to go to court.

I had the empty weapon on my right side, but he was very intoxicated as well. So I guess he forgot that he had something in the. In the top of the gun, meaning.

Around in the chamber of his glock, a round he forgot to eject. So the bullets were all in the dock except for Juan. As Jasmine tells it, she was seated to his right, basically side by side, but set back just a bit. Her right leg was dangling over the dock. Her left leg was bent and behind Henry's back. And she held the gun up at eye level so she could see better in the moonlight.

And so when I tried to get the magazine out, I tried to get the clip out, and I was pressing it. It seemed stuck. And that's when the gun just went off. I remember a loud noise, and then I remember him on top of me.

The shot would have likely killed Henry instantly.

I was pinned under him, and I tried to, like, wiggle my way out from under him to, like, render CPR or something. I didn't know what was going on. It was like a bad dream. And when I wiggled out from under him, he started to slip. Cause his feet were off the dock, and he started to slip into the water, and I tried to hold him up, but he was a very big man, and he slipped into the water. So then I was, like, trying to get my phone. I'm shaking. I'm trying to. I have blood all over me. I'm trying to get my phone flashlight so I could try to look, and I. In the water for him. Reports say that they saw a flashlight, like, or a light. So I was trying to find him. I was calling the police. I was calling everyone I could think of for help.

She was, she says, in a state of panic, and some of the details are still a little blurry.

So my security came running over, and this guy comes over and just. I've never seen the man before in my life. He picks up the gun, and I said, stop him. I said, that's evidence. He's walking away with the gun. Stop this man. I didn't know where he came from, who he was, and he just came and picked it up. And then he took it away, this.

Man she'd never seen before. He took the weapon off the dock and set it down on a wall at the hotel next door.

I don't even know how much time passed. And then all of a sudden, they were taping it off, and it was swarming with police. And next thing I know, I'm brought down to the station for processing. So I just remember being in complete shock. I felt like I was in a dream. I didn't know what was going on. I was scared. I don't know.

Detectives from the earliest days didn't seem to question the version of events that Jasmine settled on.

He handed me what I thought was a safe weapon. It was a frigging accident. He told me to practice. He wanted me to get my license. So that's what I was doing. I know that magazine was empty 100%. I was just playing with the clip and the bullets, like, getting them out and in practice. And then it just didn't seem very fair to me that all of a sudden now I'm a murderous monster. And everyone's like, when that accident could have happened to anyone.

We'll sift through the details after the break.

I'm telling you, it was empty. The clip was empty.

The zip code associated with the billing address is 12345. Perfect.

012345 for the zip code.

That's me on the phone with customer service. Well, actually, it's not me. It's a clone of my voice powered by AI. Okay, fine. That was also a voice clone. This is me, Evan Ratliff for real. And this is Shellgame, a podcast about what happens when I set an artificial version of me loose in the world. Search for Shell game wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to white devil from campside Mediataindeh. If you're lucky enough to have stayed out of trouble, no lawsuits or bad accidents or crimes on your record, you probably don't think a lot about lawyers. And when you do think of them, you probably don't hold them in very high regard. But that whole idea changes very quickly the minute you get into real trouble. Then overnight, these expensive strangers are suddenly the most important people in your life. Into the fall of 2022, Jasmine Harton's ultimate fate, to a great extent, was resting in the hands of one such person, the extremely elusive defense attorney Richard Dickey Bradley, the silver tongued lawyer who took over when the two Ashcroft appointed lawyers, Godfrey Smith and Edward Fitzgerald, stepped aside. Dickey is said to be as good as it gets.

As Hippolyto told me.

It is brilliant. One of the phrases Sherry usually believes is that if you kill someone, Carl Bradley, he'll get you off.

When I asked a cameraman who works with Hippolito if Dickie was basically like Belize's version of Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul, he laughed and said, yes, absolutely yes.

He could make the judge see what's.

Not there, which is what you want in a defense attorney, especially when you're in a bad spot. Diggie is also something of a celebrity in Belize. He's been involved in politics like many top lawyers in Belize and had a career as a tv and radio host. The most important thing about Dickie is that he's mostly seen as independent. He's undoubtedly part of the system and was at one point a member of parliament. But if you're in a tight spot, Dickie's the guy you want, and his services are in high demand, which may explain why he's so incredibly hard to reach. This is the sound of calling Dickie Bradley, a phone that rings and rings and rings. On our visit to Belize the previous May, Joe and I put aside an entire day, more or less, to see Dickie, but he wasn't answering my calls. He never once replied to a text. Hippolyto has a good working relationship with Dickie because lawyers like to use the press and vice versa. But even he sometimes struggles to get ahold of them. Finally, after many, many tries, he got through, and Dickie agreed to meet us at his office that very afternoon.

So we went to get some breakfast and planned to walk by Ashcroft Villa to kill time. Then Hippolyto texted Dickie had changed his mind. He could see us right away at his office. I said we could be there in 30 minutes. 30 minutes is too long. Hippolyto said he won't be there. So he hopped into a cab and headed to the center of Belize City hardware. That's number 21. So it's back there, right? We can just get out here. It's okay.

The K Bradley office used to be that way.

I don't know. This is the address we got. The office of Belize's finest criminal defender is up some crooked stairs on a building with a crumbling facade. Inside, there's a leaking water cooler, mismatched plastic floor tiles, and a hole in the wall about the size of an angry client's fist. We were there for about 20 minutes before Dickey sauntered in, arms aloft, greeting us. He joked that we, an American and a Brit, had been sent. Bye. Then he led us into another room and took a seat in a white leather chair behind a desk stacked high with quart files. Dickie has deep mocha skin and salt and pepper hair with tight curls that shine a bit. He was wearing a gray suit, polished black dress shoes and black frame glasses. He's charming, funny and supremely charismatic. He speaks in smooth, perfect sentences with no stumbles or pauses, like a man who's delivered many, many compelling arguments. He could no should play himself if there's ever a movie or tv show made about this case. Dickie, as we've said, was not Jasmine's lawyer. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

The Ashga family had provided attorneys for her.

But then those lawyers went away. From almost the start, Dickie says he noticed the jasmine was being treated oddly, the daily check ins, the sudden, seemingly random additional charges, and the late night transfers between stations. He's careful how he couches all of this, but you can read between the lines.

The sequence of events in that matter is a cause for serious concern. In my country, we don't behave like that. We don't allow the judiciary to be called into disrepute as a consequence of what police are trying to do.

Dickie was just saying the quiet part out loud.

We don't behave like that man. We're not, we're not that far gone. It's a matter that should be investigated.

And the way the case was being covered, how locals saw it, that felt prejudicial to Dickie.

There is a resentment against the fact that she's still seen as a socialite who has caused the death of a popular senior police officer. She has received threats. They have even put together a kind of, I don't want to say a music video, but she has been sent, like a play rehashing the incident. And somebody is an actress representing her.

What Dickie is talking about here is an advertisement for a funeral home, a funeral home that involved a dramatization of the scene at the Pierdez, one version of what might have happened, according to whoever made this funeral ad. Let me lay it out for you. It's a sepia shot of the beach and the pier where a white woman with blond hair is massaging the shoulders of a black man while he gazes out at the caribbean sea. I mean, it's clear to everyone in believes who these people are supposed to be. The woman. The actress then raises a gun, points it at the man's head and fires. It is in no way a typical depiction of an accident. This is the portrayal of an execution and things like this, Dickie tells me, have colored public opinion, which in turn colors the case, adds pressure felt by cops in court.

In the eyes of the law, everybody is equal. But she has suffered as a consequence.

Of her connections, connections she no longer has. Ominously, the first time Jasmine saw the funeral home video was two days after she left Hattieville, when she was moved to the house in the jungle. And it came to her via text from, she says, Michael Ashcroft. Jasmine was with her mom when it came in. They both recall the moment.

Well, he sent that to me and he said, see how the people look at you, Jasmine? That's why you are where you are. And he goes, they think you're a murderer. And that's. I just started crying. I cried, cried, cried.

Lord Ashcroft, through his attorney, denied that he ever sent such a text and claims that he also never told Jasmine that people thought she was a murderer. For Jasmine, the reality is, having been in that circle of power and then cast out, that's almost certainly worse for her than never having been in it to begin with. Because the people who didn't like or trust Jasmine all along, who considered her part of a privileged elite, they probably aren't changing their minds about that. And the people who had her back, who helped her take advantage of privileged status, they've either shut her out or worse, they may even be working against her. Dickie seemed to sympathize with the very unique situation Jasmine found herself in.

It can't be nice to fall from being one of the Kardashians to being in a third world prison. That must have been some kind of experience.

The case, as Dickie was seeing it, is pretty clear it should be simple.

The charge against her is that she caused a death by her negligence.

The negligence is what makes an accident potentially punishable by law. It means, basically that a person has acted in a reckless way, creating a high risk of death or serious injury. More common examples of this would be like texting while driving 80 mph in traffic or leaving a child in a car when it's extremely hot outside. A more direct comparison would be the case of Alec Baldwin and the fatal onset shooting of cinematographer Helena Hutchins. It happened just five months after the shooting of Henry Jamat. While rehearsing a scene, Baldwin was holding a prop gun that was supposed to have been unloaded. Except, of course, it wasn't. It discharged and Hutchins was killed. Prosecutors charged Baldwin and the film's armorer with involuntary manslaughter, claiming that Baldwin, also a producer on the film, wasn't properly trained in the handling of a weapon, even an unloaded one, and that he didn't request a proper safety check. Baldwin and his lawyers claimed that he shouldn't be held responsible for the misfire, in essence, that he trusted, as any actor would, that the gun he was handed by a trained professional was either unloaded or loaded with blanks. Someone is responsible for what happened, and.

I can't say who that is, but.

I know it's not me, that someone is the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reid, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in April of this year and sentenced to 18 months. But Baldwin, at least of this writing, is also still facing a trial. The first time he was charged also with involuntary manslaughter, the case was dismissed, but a different prosecutor revived the charge and got an indictment. The trial looms. There are a lot of echoes of this in Jasmine's case. Police and police never asserted that Henry Jamaats death was a murder, but they also didn't accept that it was just an accident. They asserted almost from the start that Jasmine acted recklessly, basically, that she played fast and loose with a loaded gun. Jasmine disputes even this, and I'll get to that in a moment, but as you heard earlier, she has a bigger fear that this could change, that the charge could somehow be up to murder, a charge with far more severe consequences. I mean, they still have the death penalty of police, but from where Dickie sits, it's very clear. If there were any evidence to suggest a possibility other than a tragic accident, the state would be charging it.

The police really did a thorough job because the man who died is a close friend and a protege of the commissioner of police, and he was not having any nonsense with this matter. He was going to charge her for murder, but there is no evidence whatsoever for that.

The case was thoroughly investigated with the director of public prosecutions, the country's top prosecutor overseeing it all, Cheryl Lynn Vidal. I mean, someone this senior has to play by the rules, right?

Sherilyn Vidal indicated it's a clear case of manslaughter by negligence. It was an accident, but she's prosecuting this herself. As a prosecutor, you want to win.

Implication being, I think, that while Vidal may want to land the harshest possible verdict here, she's unlikely to risk her reputation on any funny business. Still, Jasmine could face up to five years if she's convicted. But that, Dickie says, would be very unusual.

Normally, we don't put people in prison for manslaughter by negligence because it has not been the culture. But.

But the workings of the legal system in Belize are murky. Nothing is for certain.

Increasingly, there is a concern that the penalty should be stiffer.

Jasmine was given the disclosure for her case in March of 2022. Disclosure is the term for all the material that can be used against her by the prosecution. We haven't seen the filing, but we know it's more than 100 pages, which seems like a lot of information for a case that, as Dickie told us, seems so clear cut. Dickie and Jasmine won't really know the full scope of the Crown's case until the case management stage pretrial.

At that stage, we would have a pretty good idea whether they're calling for blood or whether they accept that this is a genuine accident that has happened.

This was May of 2022, when we were in Dickie's office. And despite his confidence, he didn't downplay the effect this was having on Jasmine.

Waiting like this must be a heavy toll on anyone, but more so someone in her situation. So she may throw in the towel and say, you know, I'll just go and plead guilty on the understanding that I don't get a custodial sentence and just move on with my life.

After several delays, Jasmine was finally presented with the charge in July of 2022, and Dickie faced the press to announce their plea. I guess at this point, I expected her to plead guilty. But no.

She pled not guilty to the allegation of manslaughter by negligence, and his lordship set in place.

A not guilty plea implied a level of confidence that Jasmine hadn't yet explained to. Perhaps she was just holding some things back for court, or felt that a guilty plea would hurt her ongoing custody battle. Either way, Jasmine faced a mountain of complications. A reporter outside the court from Channel Seven asked Dickie an interesting question. It's not disputable that the Ashcrafts have a wide area of interests, and in that case, where they employ so many people in this country, is it going to be extremely difficult to find one juror who is somehow not affiliated with them?

That's an excellent question. And, you know, at one time, I thought that it would be difficult for Miss Harting to get a fair trial. Mister Ashcroft is big in the hotel business. He owns business down south. He owns business all over the place. Yeah, he's a very influential person.

That's putting it mildly. You can parse this concern two ways. If you knew very little about the case, you might assume Jasmine Hartin would be judged less harshly because of her associations with Ashcroft, the jurors might favor her. But what I think Dickie is really suggesting is that it may be hard to find jurors who aren't already biased against her.

And it comes back to the concern of the judge in the trial. And that is the reason why he doesn't want no kind of irresponsible, reckless, unfair statements coming from any quarters, liars, prosecutors, journalists, anywhere, because the jury pool is so small.

The reporter had a good follow up, too, given all the publicity. In consultation with Miss Hartin. How is it that you come to a not guilty plea?

So I can easily tell you a dozen reasons, but his lordship has asked us, don't try the case in the media.

The subtext of that question was that Jasmine had talked quite openly, including to me, about the shooting. She doesn't deny holding the gun that killed Henry Jamat when it fired. So how can she possibly plead not guilty now?

At first, I was like, I just want to plead guilty. I want this over with. I feel horrible about this accident and then talking to a few people that are experts, who are like, Jasmine, you were not negligent. And it's taken me a long time to come to that conclusion.

Jasmine thinks a lot about the ways this tragedy could have been prevented. For instance, on the afternoon of his death, Henry Jamaat was pulled over for driving erratically. The officer who made the stop could rightfully have taken Henry's gun away for the day. Henry also could have opted not to go back to his room for the gun that night.

Like, there's so many things that just drive me crazy when I retrace all the steps. It was like, just so many things could have avoided this.

Jasmine's claim here is pretty simple. She believed that the gun she was handed by a police officer was empty. She watched Henry Jamaat put the bullets on the dock. There are photos of those bullets. So if Jasmine Hartin, a woman who is being taught how to handle a gun by a police officer, truly thinks that gun is empty when it's handed to her, how can she possibly be negligent when it unexpectedly fires?

I was sitting next, and my left leg was bent kind of behind him. But we're both sitting, and I'm, like, leaning. I'm trying to. People have asked me, well, where was. How far away was he? I'm like, I wasn't looking at him. I was looking to see, am I pressing the right button on this thing?

She means the button on the glock that releases the magazine. And as she's telling me this. Jasmine reenacts the scene holding the imaginary pistol in her right hand up to the sky, to the full moon. Her hand is tilted sideways so that the back of her hand and the side of the gun are facing the sky. This means the gun's barrel would have been pointing to her left, where Henry was sitting.

And so I was trying to angle it like this to see. And that could be why there was a round stuck in the. What did they say? The shell casing was stuck in the slide.

The police report showed an expended round from the bullet that fired, stuck in the pistol's slide. This tracks with the gun position she's describing.

And so then when I look that up and what that means, they say, if it's not level or if you have a limp wrist, well, I'm holding it like this, sideways to try to see if it's the right button. So that would make sense. I just don't know. I wish that night never happened.

There's no way to say this without sounding callous, but if all of this is true, the fault there really wouldn't lie with Jasmine. It would lie with the victim, with the cop who handed over the gun. Because while we can't possibly know for sure, here's what could have happened out there on that pier. A Glock 17 doesn't have a safety. The trigger, as one handgun expert told me, is hot all the time. A Glock's bullets are loaded into a magazine, and for the gun to fire, a round must be chambered, which means the top of the barrel, the slide, as it's known, is slid or cocked, if that's a term that's more familiar, backwards, to load around into the barrel. Handgun users, cops especially, often keep around in the chamber because you don't want to have to chamber around in an emergency. You want to just be able to pull and fire. And according to the expert I spoke with, it's not uncommon for someone to forget that a round is chambered, or to be sloppy, like when you're drunk and have a gun misfire. That, the guy said, is one very real possibility for what could have happened on the Pierdez.

Henry flat out forgot about the chambered round. Unfortunately, this Glock expert told me, it happens more often than you think. This particular wrinkle of the tragedy wasn't discussed much in coverage, but I brought it up a lot with friends who own and use guns, and they all told me some version of the same thing, that even experienced users make dumb mistakes, especially with glocks. One guy who still serves in the british regiment in the Caribbean, told me he hates carrying his army issued sidearm, which is, yep, a Glock 19. Anytime I have to carry, he said, I always shit my pants. We'll be right back. You're listening to white devil from Campside Media. Jasmine's lawyer, Dickie, may have been projecting confidence about how things would go, but Jasmine wasn't. She worried constantly, and there were certain specific things that she'd been obsessing over.

So what I'm worried about is the fact that they're relying heavily on the bullet that's in the gun, and they're trying to say that I was handling a loaded firearm.

Jasmine felt certain about the bullets, and she had decided to do her own investigation of sorts.

I always wanted to be a detective. I wanted to be a vet, and I wanted to be a doctor, and I wanted to be a detective, and at one point, an archeologist. I've always found it fascinating, like law and order and the science behind, you know, like CSI. I used to watch all of those shows.

She called me with updates on her investigation.

Hey, I just wanted to send you some of these photos my mom found from older news articles where the police claimed, which is true, that they found a pile of bullets. What I remember is there was two found on the pier, and the gun was empty, which is why they accepted manslaughter by negligence.

Before our first trip to Belize, Jasmine had asked if I could bring her a dvd drive. At the time, she hadn't told me what it was for. What was on those disks that you wanted the reader for?

That was all the crime scene photos.

Wouldn't those have shown? I guess they would. You can't tell what's in the gun.

Yes, you can. In the crime scene photos. Cause they're saying that there was an expended casing stuck in the side of the gun. The first picture of the gun shows zero casing anywhere near it, which would imply that somebody tampered with the gun before 03:33 a.m. when Hiro Sosa got there to document it.

Sosa was one of the detectives who worked the scene.

So then it goes from the gun with no slide, with an expedited casing stuck in it. It shows the gun completely by itself. And then the next picture shows the gun with the casing and a bullet in the magazine. So obviously, they've tampered with the gun before he got there to take pictures.

What Jasmine is suggesting here is quite serious, that the police or someone with access to the scene had planted a second bullet in the barrel of Henry's service pistol after the fact to prove that it wasn't actually unloaded, that this couldn't have been just a rogue misfire of a single chambered round that Henry forgot about, and that this was done sometime between when the initial crime scene photos were taken and when the gun was brought in for evidence.

Like, okay, the first initial photos of the gun were taken at 03:33 a.m. at 150. I'm at the station and just bringing me clothes and everything, and then at 333. So, like, let's say an hour and a half after my detention, there's a bullet plan to in the magazine. That's how quickly they moved, and that's what I can't. It's so hard for me to wrap my head around. It's hard for me to wrap my head around how swiftly and precisely and calculated so quickly.

You might remember that Godfrey Smith wasn't the only attorney assigned to Jasmine in those early days. There was also Edward Fitzgerald, the UK lawyer who'd worked on numerous high profile cases around the commonwealth. Fitzgerald left the team a few days after Jasmine's caution statement was leaked. And in early 2022, when she was obsessing about the bullets, Jasmine reached out to him.

When I got the disclosure and I saw that they took one bullet from the scene, put it in the gun, I reached out to Edward. It took a leap of faith, and I was like, hey, do you remember if there was any ammunition? And he said, yeah, there was two rounds found on the pier and the gun was empty.

This was via text. And Jasmine has a screenshot of the exchange. I've seen it. Even the fancy UK lawyer who quickly departed the case confirms that when cops first found the gun, it was empty. The obvious question here, at least to me, is, why would the cops mess with the bullets? What is accomplished by putting a single round into the magazine? It doesn't necessarily even prove she was negligent, because it's night and Henry's a cop. Maybe she saw him empty the clip, but he forgot one round, then he handed her the gun. Does that make her negligent? Not in my mind. So what does Jasmine think is going on here?

These are just my theories. They either wanted to prove gross negligence or they wanted to put a hole in my caution statement. But at that time, I hadn't even given my caution statement, so that doesn't make sense. Then my other thought, and this, I don't think I've ever shared this with anyone. I thought I wonder. The police knew that I'm tied with the ashcrofts. Is it possible that they went ahead and did it to try to say, listen, pay us a bunch of money, we'll make this go away? Like if they planted it as a leverage of burden, bribery? I don't know.

Jasmine's paranoia extended beyond the bullets. Also confusing was the matter of the cocaine, or whatever that was in the crime scene photos.

There was. I had never seen that bag in my life. But there was a ziploc bag, a little baggy, and it had white powder in it. But it was tested to be Tylenol. So, in Belize, you're given your pills in a bag, not in a bottle. So he could have had Tylenol in a bag and someone stepped on it. And then all of a sudden, I get hit with a drug charge a month later.

This is true. The powder was tested and found to be acetaminophen.

The crime scene photos show Alan woods going through my bag at unit one, and there's nothing in it. So how am I arrested with my bag and there's cocaine in it a month later? They're trying to say that that night I had my bag with me, and they checked my bag and found cocaine. But my bag is clearly at the crime scene at 08:00 in the morning.

This is worth chewing on for a moment. As you heard in episode two, the cocaine possession charge was filed a month after the shooting. But other than the acetaminophen, no drugs of any kind were found that night. And it's not because of sloppy policing. An officer named Alan woods searched Jasmine's purse, which was found and photographed at the scene, while officer Patricia Spain logged her belongings at the police station. Later, when Jasmine was strip searched, neither of them found cocaine. That's documented. But a month later, the cocaine charge was filed. Based on a new report, this one claimed that a different officer, Albert Myers is his name, found a small bag of coke in Jasmine's purse, which was somehow now at the police station with her that night and not at the scene where it had been searched and photographed just before dawn on May 21. The new report included no photograph of her purse at the station that night with cocaine in it. Nor was there a chain of custody for the alleged Baggie. Just a signed statement from Albert Myers and his boss. As the months wore on, one of the things Jasmine really started to focus on was the crime scene and the shooting's aftermath.

Different details came into clearer focus.

I don't even remember who all was there, even if the police were even there yet. But I was over by the garden, where I later was sitting down right in front of the dock. And that's when I saw Andrew talking with this Eliot Budd.

Elliot Budd was the first person to show up after the shooting. He'd been working overnight security at the hotel next to Grand Colony Mata rocks, which was closed to guests because of COVID And he's the guy Jasmine was talking about earlier, the one who picked up Henry's gun and removed it from the crime scene before the cops even.

Showed up the gun. And I said, stop him.

But incredibly, that's not the main reason. He's ended up playing an unexpectedly important role in all of this. There's a story we mentioned back in episode one that comes up often and puzzles people. Why, on the night of the shooting, did Jasmine Harden supposedly talk about a boat near the Pierde and maybe a shooter on that boat? It's become almost canon in press accounts and is an inconsistency that really bugs people. And it bugs Jasmine, too, because she has said repeatedly that she doesn't remember mentioning anything about a boat that night. So where did this story come from? Elliot Bud, when he went to the police station later that night to provide a statement, Elliott told cops that when he first arrived at the scene, Jasmine was, quote, walking in circles and appeared to be in shock, and that she supposedly told him, quote, some people on a boat drove up and shot him. But there's no other mention of this boat in any other statement or reports. Most important, it's not in Jasmine's official caution statement given to police. We can't fully discount the possibility that she did say it in those initial moments.

Jasmine has grappled with that a lot, but what's most puzzling about it to her is that she swears the only interaction she had with Elliot, a total stranger, was yelling at him to leave the gun alone. That's it. She doesn't have any memory of a conversation at all, let alone suggesting an assassin on a boat.

I remember almost absolutely everything from that night, and I do not have a recollection of saying that whatsoever.

Somehow, Elliot's boat story leaked. Reporters started asking her, and it became widely held in Belize. And beyond that, Jasmine Hartin had been changing her story. I asked her about it on her first visit to Belize back in May of 2022.

That's what they say. I said, I just remember being in complete shock. I felt like I was in a dream. I didn't know what was going on. I was scared. I really don't know. But immediately, as soon as I was, it was like the next day, I told them exactly what happened.

This is what she told Piers Morgan, too. I don't remember saying that. And when those four behavior experts convened for their YouTube panel, they looked at this moment. All four of them felt that she was being truthful. The one exception to all this is a clip in the BBC Discovery special, one bullet in Belize, filmed in the fall of 2021, a half year before my visit, during a period when the story was raging in local media. In this BBC interview, Jasmine seems to be accepting she did say it. She says, I was so in shock when I initially said that, that I barely remember what I said. And, quote, I probably should have just been honest from that moment. But when you're in that much shock and mental trauma, I don't know. It doesn't make any sense why I said that. Honestly, given all the other facts at hand, I'm not even sure it matters if the only inconsistency in Jasmine Hartin's story over a three year period is whether she did or did not blurt something preposterous to Elliot Budd before telling cops the whole truth. Well, I'm not sure that suggests much of anything.

The first time I remember hearing about the boat, I was questioned about it at the police station in San Pedro following the accident. I was asked about a passing boat, if I mentioned to anyone about a passing boat, I even said then, no, I don't remember saying anything about that. But then I think as time went on, when everyone just kept saying, yeah, you said it. And I saw it in the media, and it was like all the rumor mill in Belize saying, I said it. I don't know if it's like a false memory, but I don't have a memory of saying it. And it just doesn't make sense, because the fact that I was safeguarding the weapon and trying to get Elliot to keep it on the dock, that wouldn't make sense. That I would then say, oh, there was someone passing in a boat, and what did they take? Henry's service weapon first, shoot him and then throw it back on the dock? Like, it just. It wouldn't make logical sense that I would say, say that. And so the more time that's gone on, I'm like, no, I really didn't say that.

To me, the even stranger thing here, the thing we sort of glossed over, is that Andrew was there on the beach in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and he didn't even talk to Jasmine.

I was just so in shock at that moment. And then more and more people started to arrive and I could see him. He was almost right in front of me talking to Elliot. And then I see just tons of people starting to arrive. My security, just a lot of people everywhere.

So Andrew hears a gunshot, runs out to the beach, and sees the mother of his children covered in blood and doesn't ask anything, not what happened or. Are you okay? I'm sorry. Even if they hate each other, this is weird. They'd been at a party together that very evening.

He immediately went into like, you know, must protect my family, my image. Like he immediately distanced himself from me. He did not ask me how I am. He did not ask me what happened. Nothing. Nothing. Very cold, very distant.

Andrew said through his lawyer that this isnt right, that he was prevented from speaking to her at the pier by a police perimeter as cops tried to preserve the crime scene. Which makes some sense, I guess. But Jasmine wasn't sitting inside the police tape. And even if he was held back some distance, it still doesn't explain why he wouldn't call out or ask one of the cops to convey a message to the mother of his kids in the aftermath of this terrible accident. There's nothing improper about that, but it sure seems cold. In fact, Andrew and Jasmine didn't communicate at all until he came to the station later.

The only other time I saw Andrew that night was at the police station. Andrew brought me a change of clothes and then he took my cell phone and my jewelry. And then I never saw my phone again. That's just such a mystery. Still, in the disclosure, when they said two cell phones were found on the dock, one white iPhone with clear plastic case and a popsocket, that's exactly what I had. So I looked at the pictures. My initial reaction, seeing the picture of that phone in the disclosure was terrifying.

Terrifying because she took her phone from the scene and only gave it up at the station to Andrew. There's no way it could have also been found on the dock because I'm.

Like, that is for sure. My phone that I took to the station with me and gave to Andrew just after 02:00 a.m. so how is my phone photographed the five, 6 hours later at the dock. But then I shared this with a few of my friends and they're like, you know, Jaz, it says here that the warrant to look through the phones were that they were both Henry's phones. But I can't be that crazy like I'm looking at pictures of this phone. I don't know a lot of men that have white iPhones with clear plastic case and a marbled old popsocket on it.

Much later, after she'd seen the photos, Jasmine asked Andrew about this.

I actually sent him a picture from the disclosure, and I said, you took my phone and you gave it to the police. I'm like, what is going on here? He said, I don't know what you're talking about. I threw your phone in the ocean. So he admitted to me that he got rid of my phone. All I know is that Michael always said that never, ever, ever trust electronics. So when he. He upgrades his computer or his phone, he throws them in the ocean. So that's why when Andrew said that, I kind of believed it.

Why would Andrew want her phone at the bottom of the sea?

You know, I had all kinds of messages between my friends and I over the years when we were fighting, when I caught Andrew cheating, when Andrew was abusive to me, all of that would have been on my phone. So it makes sense he wouldn't want me to have that.

When we reached out via his lawyers, Andrew denied that he took that phone or disposed of it in the sea. But I've heard the tape of a conversation between Andrew and Jasmine where she asks him directly about throwing that phone in the ocean. He didn't admit it, but he also doesn't deny it or even blanch when Jasmine brings the idea up. At one point, he even recites the passcode to that phone back to her cryptically.

Like, they didn't even have time to breathe. They just literally went on the attack.

That.

That's, like, evil genius, like, instantly thought about weakens. I know that's why it's on. Who's behind this on his own. He obviously called his father right away and said, dad, because damage control. And he's probably said, dad, what do I do? And his son, let me take it from here.

Through his attorney, Andrew gave an entirely different account. He said that he did act in Jasmine's interests by providing her with an attorney, Godfrey Smith. Further, he provided her with the Jungle house, luxurious accommodations that were away from the intense media scrutiny where she would feel safe. Lord Ashcroft's attorney similarly denied that he went on the attack against Jasmine after the shooting. It's very possible that even if Jasmine's convicted on the current charge, she won't go back to prison. But a conviction on negligence does create other risks. There are undoubtedly implications for her custody battle, and it seriously complicates the other challenge she almost certainly faces here, a civil case. This could explain why she wanted to plead not guilty, even if the risk of accepting a guilty plea was, at worst, a fine. Dickie explained it to us.

The view is, if you cause death by negligent behavior, you really should be sued and taken to the cleaners, which would be ideal in her circumstances.

Ideal to a plaintiff? To Henry's family? Certainly not to Jasmine. Henry had five kids who now don't have a father. A conviction on a charge of negligence basically enshrines in law fault that can be punished via financial judgment, which is a pretty big risk for someone who has no money.

She would not be able to meet any judgment. I don't know how the lawyers for that would deal with the other side of her family. It's a difficult question.

And the likelihood of a civil suit inevitably brings us back to that other, even more difficult question. What about Henry's culpability?

If there is a civil lawsuit, he would also be considered to have contributed to his death. Why are you, an experienced police officer, allowing someone is not that experienced to be handling your firearm. Your firearm should not be in the hands of nobody.

Again, not to speak ill of Henry, but he was negligent to hand me a loaded gun.

In some manner. Jasmine caused Henry's death. She'll be carrying that for the rest of her life. And yet, as hard as it is to talk about, a cop should never hand his service weapon to anyone at any time, especially when he's been drinking. That's not controversial.

Even if you're holding my firearm, I should make sure that there is no bullet, no ammunition in it, that it can't go off and hurt you, because I would be responsible.

At this point, there's no firm date set for Jasmine's trial. People have given us different estimates of when this will be like, that it could have been last summer, or possibly it won't happen for a few years, but probably next summer. Honestly, no one seems to know. It was a frequent topic in our conversations. So are you getting pushed to the next session?

Um, I don't know. So, basically, I still have not talked to Dickie.

Jasmine was growing increasingly exasperated with her attorney, mostly because he just wasn't available or was hard to reach. And when he did show up, she was underwhelmed.

All he did was come into the courtroom, stood up for me for five minutes, and then left.

Jasmine's frustration with Dickie had been growing for a while. At one point, when he was, in her opinion, taking too long to fight her bail variations. She hired a second lawyer to contest it. That worked. It's why the check ins were changed. But it also caused all kinds of drama with Dickie and the courts. Worse to Jasmine was when Lionel Neal's mom allegedly called her to say that Piggy was being asked to provide fake testimony against her. The mom was even willing to provide a statement.

She said, can you get Dickie here right now to take a statement from him? And his response to all of that wasn't, that's great that he wants to do his statement. No, no. He said, you're gonna end up back in jail if you continue talking to police witnesses. And I was like, what? Like, why wouldn't you jump at that and say, okay, let's meet with him. Let's get a statement proving that he's lying to. Like, why wouldn't you jump at that to help me? So I don't trust Dickie. I really don't.

At the end of September, Jasmine left me a message.

I fired Dickie today.

As frustrated as she'd been, I did not see this coming. Dickie was, by all accounts, one of the best defense lawyers in Belize. But she'd heard things specifically, that he'd been compromised in some way. And by the time I spoke with her, she'd already replaced him. Had Dickie actually turned on Jasmine? She felt certain of it either way. She was now at the end of her tether and was changing her approach.

I'm not backing down. I'm fucking pissed. Like, I'm so angry with the corruption here. I've had enough. They've had enough. We're willing to go forward, and we're all coming together because. Power in numbers.

Next week on White Devil, Jasmine finds a whole new front to fight on. Under the shade of under the rocks. White Devil is a production of Campsite Media in association with Olive Bridge Entertainment. The show was written and reported by me, Josh Dean, with the series producer Joe Barrett. The story editor and sound designer is Mark McAdam, who also provided original music. Additional sound design by Joe Barrett. Studio engineering by Ewan Lytromuhan. Our closing theme is under the shade I flourish by Chris Halton, and new Manhattan, including Eli Carvajal, Hava Carvajal, and Louis Cherniofsky. This episode was fact checked by Sarah Ivory, additional research by Emma Simonov, and reporting in Belize by Hippolyto Novello. Artwork by Anthony Garace. A special thanks to our operations team, Doug Slaywin, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, Emma Simonoff, Destiny Dingle, and David Eichleregh. Campsite Media's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, Matt Scherr, and me, Josh teen at Olive Bridge. The executive producer is will gluck. If you enjoyed our show, please rate and review it on Apple podcasts or wherever you're listening. It really does help other people find the show. And here's a thought. Maybe tell a friend to check out white devil while you're at it.

Anyway, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. The zip code associated with the billing address is 12345. Perfect.

012345 for the zip code.

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