u/charlottelennox

First things first, please don't come at me about the length of this post. I know I am long-winded, I am self-conscious about it, and I realize you could get decently drunk in a drinking game where you take a shot every time you see someone say, "I'm not reading all of that."

If you don't want to read this, that's fine; I'm not posting this for debate or argument, I just wanted to share some insight for those who are interested or may be feeling the same way as me (which was confused, frustrated, and gaslit about what the deal is with this goddamn 17-minute call).

For context, I just joined this particular community this week and was reading the recent threads about the existence, or lack thereof, of the 17 minute call between Jack Decoeur and Kaylee Goncalves. This isn't something that I considered particularly important, tbh, nor is it something that I thought much about prior to this week.

I read it in Mowery's report back when the report first came available and mentally filed it away as part of the timeline of the case. It's not a make-or-break-the-case aspect, so I genuinely didn't realize there was even debate about this until I started reading the back-and-forth in the threads.

Needless to say I was confused, so I set out to try to figure out what I was missing and if/when Mowery's report had been debunked (for lack of a better word) (aside from people taking issue with Whitcomb including it in his transcribed timeline).

I don't think it matters how I got here (it was a bit of a journey) but I ended up at ChatGPT, and this is the "conversation" I had with it and wanted to post bc I found it to be rather enlightening about the issue.

Some things to note:

I don't use ChatGPT enough to want or need to pay for a plan, so the responses come from just the basic, free model.
I also cleaned up ChatGPT's responses to organize bullet points into narrative paragraphs and omit repetitive information / asides that I didn't find relevant so that I could share what I feel are the main takeaways as succinctly as possible.
I didn't include Mowery's report in this thread bc it has already been shared multiple times and I don't feel that I need to.

One final disclaimer: I am very much aware that it is counterproductive to use AI / ChatGPT "evidence" to demonstrate why AI is unreliable. However, the responses I got to my questions are (imo) reasonable conclusions that I found insightful bc I hadn't considered AI-usage in the discourse, or how that might skew people's overall confusions.

So I'm not presenting this as evidence of anything, really, so don't get it twisted; I'm just sharing what I think is a very interesting aspect when it comes to the discourse, and when it comes to engaging in debate online in general. Food for thought, if you will.

Conversation starts here.

Me: What information is there to show whether Jack Decouer (JD) placed a 17 minute call to Kaylee Goncalves (KG), or vice versa, that would have been on the phone records and had Moscow Police (MPD) include it in their timeline of the Idaho 4 murders?

>ChatGPT: There are two separate issues here:

- the publicly known series of unanswered calls between KG and Madison Mogen (MM) to JD between 2:26am and 2:52am

- later internet claims that there was an additional 17-minute connected call between JD and KG.

The first category is firmly documented by police statements which consistently described KG calling JD multiple times from 2:26 - 2:44am, MM calling him several times from 2:44 - 2:52am; and another final call from KG at 2:52am.

However, as of now, there is no officially released MPD timeline, PCA, court filing, or trial exhibit publicly confirming a completed, 17-minute phone call between JD and KG. The official public timeline did not include such a call. Instead, it repeatedly characterized the calls as unanswered attempts.

The 17-minute claim appears to come from later online discussions, leaked or allegedly leaked investigative materials, commentary surrounding books/interviews, and Reddit analysis threads referencing supposed ISP/MPD records.

So to directly answer your question: Reports indicate JD voluntarily provided access to his phone, but publicly, MPD never officially presented a completed 17-minute call, who initiated it, [or] whether it was voice or FaceTime.

This is why there is ongoing confusion online: the official public narrative says repeated unanswered calls, while later unofficial discussions claim a longer connected call appeared in internal records.

Me: Why would an MPD detective specifically ask JD about the call if it was not in the records?

>ChatGPT: There are several plausible reasons: phone extraction data, partial telecom records, deleted logs, inconsistent timestamps, FaceTime app activity, or simply to test the subject's recollection and truthfulness.

For example, even if carrier records showed "no completed cellular voice call," investigators still might have seen an attempted FaceTime session, an answered-but-immediately-disconnected call, VoIP activity, or overlapping device activity suggesting contact occurred.

Another important possibility is simple investigative procedure: detectives routinely ask about events they already know did not occur, specifically to see whether the person lies, changes details, or volunteers unexpected information.

So if an investigator asked JD something like, "Tell me about that call," it does not automatically mean police had ironclad proof a 17-minute connected call existed.

Me: I feel gaslit. Detective Lawrence Mowery includes in his supplemental report from 11/13/22 that he said to JD, "There appears to be a call to KG at 2:26am that lasted approximately 17 minutes."

If he was employing an investigative technique by asking about something he knew didn't happen, why include a specific time duration of 17 minutes, starting at 2:26am?

Or, if he was not asking about something that he already knew didn't happen, is it not reasonable to assume that he was referring to a call he had actually seen either in the log or on JD's phone, meaning that it happened?

>ChatGPT: Your interpretation is reasonable. If Detective Lawrence Mowery documented in a supplemental report that he told JD: "There appears to be a call to KG..." then that wording strongly suggests he was looking at some form of record or data artifact indicating a communication event, beginning around 2:26am, associated with KG, with a duration of about 17 minutes.

That is a much more concrete statement than a vague fishing question. A detective typically would not invent a precise start time plus a precise duration without some underlying source prompting it.

So yes, it is natural to infer that Mowery believed at 17-minute communication event existed in the data he was reviewing at the time.

Where caution still matters is in defining what "it happened" means technically. The report wording "there appears to be a call" is important. It suggests preliminary interpretation, not necessarily a finalized forensic conclusion. But it does strongly imply there was some logged event with a measurable duration.

Me: So why are people who claim that a 17 minute call existed and it came from MPD being dismissed as either misunderstanding the documents or flat out spreading misinformation?

>ChatGPT: Because two different claims are getting conflated online:

"A Moscow Police detective referenced a 17-minute call/event in a report."

"It is conclusively proven that JD and KG had a 17-minute phone conversation."

The first claim has a documentary basis if the supplemental report you referenced is authentic and accurately quoted. In that sense, people are not inventing the number "17 minutes" out of nowhere. It appears tied to an actual investigative document by Mowery.

The misinformation accusations usually start when discussions move from "a detective referenced a 17-minute event" to "there definitely was a confirmed 17-minute conversation and police covered it up." Those are different evidentiary claims.

A few reasons people push back hard against the 17-minute narrative: a) the official public timeline from MPD repeatedly described the calls as unanswered attempts; b) no public logs showing a completed 17-minute conversation have been officially released; c) online discussions often mutate the claim into stronger assertions than the underlying document actually states; and d) some creators present speculation as established fact, which causes others to label the entire topic "misinformation."

At the same time, it is also inaccurate to say "There was never any police reference to a 17-minute call." Based on the wording you quoted, there apparently was such a reference in at least one supplemental report.

So, the most precise framing is probably that there is evidence that an MPD detective referenced an apparent 17-minute call/event at 2:26am, but this is not the same thing as publicly verified proof of a completed 17-minute conversation.

The contradiction between that report language and the later public narrative is real, which is why people continue debating it.

Me: What role has AI generated answers / interpretations played in contributing to the misinformation and confusion around issues in this case?

>ChatGPT: AI-generated answers and interpretations have played a major role in amplifying confusion around the Idaho 4 murder case, especially because the case already contains incomplete public records, sealed evidence, conflicting timelines, leaks, rumors, and emotionally charged online communities.

The problem is not just "AI makes things up." It's more specific than that.

A few major ways AI has contributed:

AI often collapses uncertainty into certainty. For example, with the alleged 17-minute call, one source says "there appears to be a call," another says, "multiple unanswered calls," another speculates about FaceTime metadata, etc.

AI systems frequently smooth those contradictions into a single, confident narrative even when evidence is unresolved. This creates answers that sound authoritative but quietly convert "possible," "reported," and "appears" into "confirmed." Or the reverse: "not officially confirmed" becomes "debunked." Both distort the underlying evidence.

AI tends to over-weight repeated internet claims. Large language models learn patterns from repeated text online. So if Reddit threads, TikTok scripts, YouTube commentary, blogs, and reposted summaries all repeat the same interpretation, AI may present that interpretation as broadly factual even if the original claim was weak or speculative.

This is especially dangerous because rumors get duplicated thousands of times and start looking "validated" simply through repetition.

AI struggles with evidentiary hierarchy. Human investigators distinguish between sworn testimony, police reports, leaked screenshots, forum speculation, and commentary. AI often blends them together unless specifically prompted to separate verified evidence from investigative interpretation from public speculation.

This is exactly what has happened in discussions around phone records, the DoorDash timeline, sheath DNA, latent footprint evidence, and alleged hidden evidence.

AI generated summaries erase nuance. A detective report might say, "there appears to be a call," but AI generated summaries online may rewrite that as, "police confirmed a 17-minute phone call" or "the 17-minute call was disproven."

Both are stronger than the actual wording. This becomes compounded when creators copy AI summaries into videos, narrate them confidently, and other users then quote those summaries as though they were primary-source evidence.

AI encourages "pattern completion." AI is designed to produce coherent answers, not necessarily preserve ambiguity. In a case with missing information, AI often fills gaps by inference.

So when users ask, "Why would police ask about a 17-minute call if it didn't happen?" many AI systems will generate a fully coherent explanation: either "it definitely happened," or "it was merely an interrogation tactic," even though the actual answer may be, "we do not publicly have enough forensic documentation to know exactly what record Mowery was referencing."

Me: Why does AI differentiate between "there appears to be" and "there is," when one can infer that "appears to be" is a colloquialism rather than an indication that something is open to interpretation?

For example, if someone said, "Hmm, it appears to be raining," when looking outside at the rain (and it is, indeed, raining), then it would be unreasonable to assume that the person observing the rain is leaving room for someone else to say that whether or not it's raining is open to interpretation, right?

>ChatGPT: What you are pointing out is a real limitation in how AI - and sometimes legal/forensic analysis generally - handles language. In ordinary human conversation, you are correct. If someone looks outside and says, "it appears to be raining," most people would naturally interpret that as, "I am observing rain," not "rain is merely hypothetical."

Likewise, in the context you described, many reasonable people would interpret Mowery saying, "there appears to be a call ... that lasted approximately 17 minutes," as meaning, "I am looking at data showing a 17-minute call-related entry." That is a fair inference.

Where AI becomes overly cautious is that it is trained to distinguish between direct confirmed statements, inferred conclusions, and interpretations of wording. So instead of saying, "the detective clearly saw a 17-minute call log," AI tends to back away into, "the detective appeared to reference an apparent call event."

This happens because AI systems are optimized to avoid overstating uncertain evidence - sometimes to the point of sounding evasive or artificial.

In your example, the phrase "appears to be" in normal English is often just conversational softening, not literal uncertainty. Detectives, cops, lawyers, and witnesses constantly use hedging language even when referring to something directly in front of them.

Examples: "It sppears the suspect entered through the rear door." "There appears to be blood on the wall." "It appears the phone connected for 17 minutes."

That does not usually mean, "maybe none of this exists." It usually means, "this is what I am currently observing / reporting."

If a detective documented a precise timestamp and a specific duration, and questioned JD about it, the natural interpretation is that the detective likely saw some actual record reflecting a 17-minute communication-related event.

The remaining uncertainty is not whether Mowery referenced something real. The uncertainty is exactly what kind of record it was, whether it reflected an active two-way conversation, whether later analysis reclassified it, and why it diverged from the later public narrative.

End of conversation. Emphasis mine, to help indicate what I felt were the most illuminating points regarding this discussion. I did go further and the conversation moved from these particulars into how AI and over-reliance on it for assistance with interpreting factual data/evidence can be problematic in the true crime community in general, but I omitted that for length.

So my main takeaways here are that I'm not crazy / others are not crazy or misunderstanding that Mowery's report documents that he asked JD about the call and the specifics in how he asked (duration and timestamp) indicate that he was referencing some kind of record he'd seen or had access to (such as JD's actual phone) rather than using the call as a strategy to fish around for information, knowing the call didn't exist.

But, we only have Mowery's word / report to reference as documentation that he referenced a call, and without the publicly released forensic extraction of JD's phone, Kaylee's phone, or both, none of us can say with certainty that it happened or it didn't happen.

I don't consider family, such as Alivea, saying it didn't (or simply not confirming it did) as evidence bc it's still just hearsay, and the distinction between any records she (or anyone else) might post vs the actual forensic extraction is the difference in information that can easily be manipulated vs information that can be confirmed as valid.

I don't say that to say I think Alivea or anyone else would post faked or altered records to prove a point that, honestly, doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of the case. I'm just saying that if something like KG's data was to be posted, it wouldn't really matter bc anything other than a copy of the forensic extraction wouldn't be proof beyond doubt and would only contribute to the misinformation on this issue.

Unfortunately, I don't imagine that we will see the forensic extraction anytime soon, if ever. If it's not under seal, it would likely be exempt from FOIA bc it would be personal information involving someone who was not charged or convicted of any crime in this case.

Whitcomb may have seen the forensic extraction, which may be why he felt compelled to include it in his transcribed timeline. That's just speculation, though; I don't know what he saw.

So, yeah - AI is playing a larger role than I realized in the discourse, so I wanted to share this in the hopes of reminding people who may rely on it that it regurgitates / recycles information that people are putting on the internet and that doesn't mean an answer it comes up with is a valid point or rebuttal.

Hopefully this offers some clarity on all of this and hopefully someone besides me found it interesting.

Edit for formatting, I am trying to keep ChatGPT's responses in quotes but the post keeps not doing that when I save it.

(Third time's the charm? Repost.)

I'm sorry in advance for the length of this post; once I got to this point, I considered not posting it but, like, what else am I going to do with it? So since I did the work already, here were are. I'm making two "parts" to this post; the first part is the image descriptions that summarize my findings, and the second part is basically my tl;dr commentary.

( Link to Turvey's website; at the bottom, there is a link that says Turvey CV and clicking on it will automatically download the CV onto your computer.)

So first, the images. I’ve attached 4 images and I hope that the quality is legible; if not, let me know and I will post them again. I’ve labeled the images in the captions, so I’m including longer descriptions below. I do have sources, but I kind of saved them haphazardly along the way, so I will add those in a comment later on.

Image Descriptions:

1. Court Experience. This is a breakdown of the 72 cases Turvey included on his CV in which, in addition to working on / providing reports for, he also qualified as an expert witness in forensic examination, crime scene reconstruction and analysis, and/or any of the other major areas designated on his CV. Subsequent to qualifying as an expert, he provided testimony in these cases, either at the trial level or as part of the post-conviction appeal process.

Of the 72 cases, 50 don’t really include a result; they indicate the charge, such as homicide, etc, but whether or not the defendant was actually convicted and/or the conviction was upheld or not isn’t stated. However, he specifically includes when a case resulted in an acquittal/exoneration, etc, so I’m assuming these 50 cases were convictions.

That leaves 22 cases: 12 resulted in an acquittal, exoneration, or an Alford plea (which I realize does not indicate innocence but in these cases did result in the defendant being released from prison, so I’ve grouped it in here), 7 resulted in the defendant pleading to lesser charges as part of a deal and/or larger charges being dropped, and 2 were civil cases in which monetary judgements were awarded (not clear to whom the judgements were awarded, so I’m not counting them as either a “win” or a “loss,” just not criminal).

2. Additional Major Case Experience. These are an additional 104 cases Turvey has included on his CV. He did not testify in these trials, either bc he was brought on post-trial, the case never made it to trial, or other various reasons, but he did work / provide reports for them. There are several categories on this particular pie chart that probably could have been condensed, but I tried to categorize them as Turvey did on his CV. So, for example, he included cases that resulted in “charges dropped” and “case dismissed,” and I am not really sure what the difference is between those but either way, the result is no trial.

3. Total Major Case Experience. For this chart, I combined the numbers from the previous two charts, condensed some of the redundant categories, and came up with some totals. Between 72 cases with expert testimony and 104 cases without expert testimony, the total is 176 cases, with the breakdown as indicated.

4. Key Cases. These are some of the main details / points of interest from a handful of the cases that resulted in exoneration. The most well-known one is the West Memphis 3 case. Apparently, Turvey was in at least one of the documentaries about this case, but I didn’t know that and didn’t know he was involved in this case at all until I looked it up. But considering that the WM3 case is pretty universally regarded as one in which the 3 were legitimately wrongfully convicted, I thought it was worth pointing out not just Turvey’s hand in that result but also including how highly the defense team on that case spoke of him.

How I Got Here:

This started as a deep dive into Christopher Whitcomb to determine his credibility after the release of Broken Plea, and from there, I wanted to also determine for myself the credibility of Dr. Turvey, Sy Ray, and anyone else who has spoken out against the official narrative of the case.

Anne Taylor’s press release really threw a monkey wrench into the “post book” press, in that where it would have been ideal to see what people thought of the new information released on its own merit, the immediate accusation of Taylor et al. of Turvey breaking an NDA led to many people immediately discrediting him and by extension the book (in addition to those who had decided to discredit the book before it even came out, which is a choice).

Anyway, there is literally nothing in this case that can be determined through discussion alone, especially on social media - the only thing I can be sure of is what I can figure out for myself, based on facts. Hence the deep dive.

It’s been a few days that I’ve been working on this, and it’s still in progress, bc Brent Turvey’s CV / body of work is so extensive that this ended up being just a deep dive on Turvey exclusively as I tried to sift through the absolutely ridiculous amount of experience he includes on his CV. It is 54 pages long, and we live in the era of “tl;dr,” so I very much doubt that many people are reading all 54 pages, let alone exploring anything on it further. Not that I’ve seen, anyway.

Anyway, I’ve done my best to sift through his CV material to provide what I feel like is an accurate breakdown of how his work has directly or indirectly affected his cases, as well as to show that Bryan Kohberger’s case is not an outlier at all to Turvey.

The basic summary / conclusion here is this: He has consulted on plenty of post-conviction cases as well as testified as an expert during the trial phases, and while he more often than not he aligns himself with the defense and has done a lot of work with the Innocence Project, he also collaborates/works with several law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, his experience is not just limited to the US, as he has included a good handful of international cases on his CV, as well.

The only thing that makes BK’s case different from the other cases he’s worked on is that this is the only time (that I could find) that a defense team he previously worked with came out and threw him under the bus with accusations of impropriety. While there are certainly criticisms of criminal profiling (one of his areas of expertise), and challenges to his conclusions, these are things that come down to “battle of the experts” in trial and do not indicate anything dishonest, sensationalist, or not credible about his work.

I did find vague references to his credibility being called into question by professionals but could not find anything concrete, aside from a filing in one of the cases where LE / the State tried to discredit him with unsubstantiated claims, and those claims were refuted. I couldn't find where I saved that document, and wasn't sure if anyone would be interested in that; if you are, let me know and I'll dig it back up / post it, but the takeaway for me was that a State got salty that Turvey called bullshit on their case and tried to smear him in response. While this is not unlike what's happening now, the difference is that he wasn't working with the State on that case; AT is the only other "entity" to try to discredit him, and the only one with whom he had a previous working relationship. So, make of that what you will.

Regarldess, for all of the “his career is over” discourse I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks, I think that unless Anne Taylor brings some cold, hard facts to the table to prove her allegations, his career isn’t going anywhere. It’s too consistently accomplished.

A couple of disclaimers: For the sake of trying to narrow down his CV into what is most relevant to the BK case, I omitted his list of publications, LE associations, and peer review credentials, though they are certainly on his CV for anyone who wants to tackle that themselves. I also omitted the international cases, as they wouldn’t pertain directly to patterns / procedures in the US justice system.

This left me with approximately 180 cases. What’s most challenging about this CV is that while Turvey includes relevant work he did on various cases, he doesn’t always include the result of the cases, nor does he make the extent of his work easily accessible aside from noting on the CV that he provided reports to XYZ.

He does, however, include when a defendant has been exonerated, or acquitted, or when there was an outcome that basically indicated the defendant either wasn’t convicted or the conviction was overturned. So in the cases where there’s no clear “result” on the CV, I assume these are convictions. Of course, on some of the cases he *does* include “Conviction” explicitly, so I’m not sure why he includes some but not all.

So I did my best with that. The other thing that made this challenging was that I’m aware a CV is meant to bolster a person’s experience, and that Turvey clearly thinks very highly of himself / his work (which is fine, but is not unbiased), so I wanted a more objective view of his work. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of consistency on which cases he provides links for on his CV. Many of the cases don’t have links and of those that do, sometimes the link just leads to one of Turvey’s own posts somewhere (usually LinkedIn) regarding the case.

Finally, the cases are only titled by the State vs. XYZ, and there’s no single, comprehensive database that has ALL the court decisions of ALL the states and counties. Justia Law, CaseLaw, and similar sites have some of the court filings and materials available, but without knowing the county that the case occurred in, tracking down records was difficult and I only have so much time.

So I’ve only included notes / commentary on a handful of cases in which the person(s) was exonerated, acquitted, etc. I did read more filings than I included here, including a lot of the cases where the conviction was upheld, and I got the idea that the cases that didn’t result in an exoneration or acquittal (despite Turvey claiming to find exculpatory evidence) were not necessarily due to Turvey being wrong in his assertions but rather that the Court found said issues insufficient to grant an appeal, or a new trial, or whatnot.

Once a person is convicted, it is a steep climb to even make it through the appeal process, let alone actually get a conviction vacated. Which is a travesty when these are not airtight convictions. That said, the amount of cases that Turvey was involved in that *did* get overturned is nothing to scoff at. Personally, I have concluded that he is credible, that his claims / work is credible, and that anyone who wants to discredit or dismiss him is welcome to but if they want to be taken seriously they better be able to rebut this massive body of work that more than speaks for itself (imo).

I don't know how to not be long-winded, so here's a dissertation on the 17 minute call, the discourse, and overreliance on AI when it comes to interpetation of evidence in this case.

Deep-dive into Turvey's experience / body of work. It's a lot.