The Proof Brett Cole Never Touched: How the Salsa Joe's Murders Jury Got to Guilty

Tom Strussion opened a Salsa Joe's in Elm Grove with a man from Oklahoma in the spring of 2021. By the fall the partnership was over, and on the morning of September 21, Tom and his wife Angela were found shot to death in their burning house on Trails End Drive. On Wednesday, November 4, a Belmont County jury decided that the partner, Andrew Griffin, came back from Oklahoma, killed them both and set the fire.

Guilty on all five counts. Guilty of the planned murder of Angela. Guilty of the planned murder of Tom. Guilty of both killings a second way, as murders committed while trespassing in their home. Guilty of the arson. And on every murder count, a finding that he had a gun and used it. Twelve people, polled one at a time, said yes to every line.

Our last article on this trial covered Days 1 and 5, the State's promises and the helmet DNA. This one catches up the rest of it: Day 6, when Brett Cole took the stand, Day 7, when the evidence ran out and the arguing began, and Day 8, the verdict. I'm going to walk you through what the jury heard, what it didn't hear, and the one question this whole trial came down to. Nobody saw Andrew Griffin in that house. There was no confession to police, no gun, no fingerprint and no DNA from the scene. The State's star witness was a man serving three federal life sentences who testified under immunity. So could the State prove this case without leaning on that man's word alone? The jury said it did. I think on the man, they were right. On one count, I'd have come out somewhere else, and I'll show you exactly why that count never carried the risk it looked like.

VERDICTJury Finds Andrew Griffin Guilty of Both Murders and the Arson

The witness the phone case had been pointing at for a week

Day 6, Monday, November 2, opened with paperwork, and the paperwork mattered. An analyst for AT&T walked the jury through the raw records underneath every map they had seen the week before. The one page that landed was Cricket Wireless's subscriber record for the prepaid phone at the center of the case. The name on it was James Jobe, at an address in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the analyst told the jury what that name is worth: for a prepaid account Cricket asks for a name and an address and checks neither. That is the State's point and the defense's point in a single answer. A phone in a made-up name tells you nothing about who bought it, which is exactly why the State says it was bought that way.

WATCH: PT 22AT&T Analyst Testifies No One Checks the Name on a Prepaid Phone

The defense stipulated that every AT&T record was authentic and asked the analyst nothing. Then, about twenty minutes before eleven, the State called Brett Cole.

If you've followed this trial, you know the name. The State opened on Day 1 with one number in Brett Cole's phone records: a prepaid phone that called Cole, and only Cole, at 7:03 on the morning after the killings, from Jackson, Tennessee. That phone had been bought for cash in Marion, Illinois, two days earlier, had driven to Belmont County, and had sat near the Strussion house for most of a day. Every map the State showed for a week ran back to that call.

The prosecutor did what you do with a witness the jury isn't going to like. He got all of it out first. Cole is 36. He is in federal custody, convicted in 2023 of three federal sex offenses against children, serving three life sentences. He testified under an immunity agreement. In his own words, as long as he told the truth he would not be charged for his role in the Strussions' murders. The State also promised to try to have him moved to a federal prison in Texas, closer to his family, and it put money on his books twice, $300 here and $250 through his family, $550 in all. He explained that one himself: he runs a little store in prison, buying commissary and selling it at a markup, and when he's away on a writ his customers don't pay him, so the State covered what he lost.

Then the relationship, and it was about as close as two men get. They grew up together in southeastern Oklahoma. Cole's grandparents helped raise Griffin. In 2021 Cole worked Griffin's land, building pens and running a dozer, and Griffin paid him by check, two of which the jury saw. When Cole was charged, Griffin lent him the money for his lawyer. When the federal case came, Griffin paid for that lawyer too. Once Cole went to prison, Griffin held his power of attorney.

Why had Cole said nothing for three years? His lawyer told him not to. He felt loyal to Griffin, "like a little brother." He was afraid of being charged. And he was going to prison, where being a snitch can get you killed.

What Brett Cole told the jury

Everything Cole knew about Tom and Angela, he said, came from Griffin. It started as a good story: Griffin was going in as Tom's partner on a Salsa Joe's, would learn the business, and then open four or five more back in Oklahoma. Then the complaints started. Tom was trying to take his money and leave for Florida. And then the prosecutor asked the question this trial had been waiting on: did Cole get involved with the defendant in planning the Strussions' murder?

"Yes."

Here is how Cole says Griffin sold it to him. Tom owed a large debt to mobsters who owned the building the restaurant rented, and Tom was trying to push that debt onto Griffin so they would come after him instead. It was "pretty much a kill or be killed" situation, Cole said, and he agreed every word of that came from Griffin. "We planned it for a while," he said, just the two of them.

And then Cole told the jury that most of the method was his. Buy a cheap motorcycle off Craigslist or Facebook, because the plate is on the back where a bag can hang over it. Wear frog togs, the cheap rain gear, with gloves, and tape the cuffs so no hair or sweat gets out. Use a .22 revolver, quiet and effective, because a revolver keeps its casings. Wear boots a size off. Use prepaid fuel cards so you never walk into a gas station in front of a camera. Buy a burner for maps and for the call home. So what part was Griffin's idea?

"The killing."

WATCH: PT 23Lifelong Friend Testifies Under Immunity the Killing Was Griffin's Idea CLIPBrett Cole Testifies He and Griffin Planned the Salsa Joe's Murders Down to the Revolver

Then Cole answered the question that had hung over Day 5. If you remember, the State's own maps had Griffin's phone sitting in Hugo, Oklahoma, all that weekend, texting his wife, and the defense's best point was that somebody was carrying that phone. Cole said that somebody was him, by plan. He kept Griffin's phone, posted to Snapchat, and texted Stacy Griffin back and forth so the phone would look alive. His instructions were to answer nothing and no one except Stacy. He drove Griffin's truck around Griffin's land in front of the game cameras. He had Griffin's bank card, and he believed he used it for fuel.

CLIPBrett Cole Testifies He Kept Griffin's Phone and Truck in Oklahoma

He also bought the bike. He found it on Facebook Marketplace in Texas, paid cash he said was Griffin's, and took his friend Dalton Ray along. While he looked it over he was on the phone with Griffin, and when the seller wanted the buyer's information for the paperwork, Cole wrote down whatever Griffin told him. The title the jury saw names a James Fisher in Mississippi, with a phone number of 918-318-0228. Griffin's own number was 918-318-0229. One digit off. And when the seller's habit of photographing everything spooked Cole, he told Griffin to wait for a different bike. Griffin said no. He couldn't wait, Cole said, because Tom was leaving for Florida.

CLIP · LIVE NOV 8, 2:15 PM ETBrett Cole Testifies Griffin Couldn't Wait Because Tom Was Leaving for Florida

Then the part of Cole's testimony I want you to hold onto, because it comes back on the verdict. Griffin came back and told him what happened, Cole said. He parked at a pull-off and watched the house from the woods. He went in the back. Tom and Angela were sitting down. Griffin asked where the money was. Tom said there wasn't any. Griffin shot Tom. Angela jumped up and ran toward him, and he shot her. Then he went back to Tom, asked again, got the same answer, and killed him. He tossed the house to look like a robbery. He burned his clothes on the way home by some water. The gun, a pearl-handled .22 revolver Cole had seen before, came back ground down until only the grips and the back strap were left.

CLIPBrett Cole Testifies Griffin Said He Watched the House From the Woods

And before any of that, Cole told the jury what the plan was. The plan was only ever to kill Tom. Angela was not part of it. As far as Cole knew, she had nothing to do with any of it.

He gave the jury one more thing the State badly wanted: an explanation for the helmet. If you remember Day 5, the helmet held DNA from at least four people, and the two labs fought over whether Griffin was one of them. Cole said the helmet was Griffin's, that Griffin left it with him along with the bike, that it didn't fit him, and that he lent it out to friends at four-wheeler races who'd forgotten their own. He told investigators where to find it, along with the windshield and speakers he stripped off the bike before he traded it for a truck.

CLIPBrett Cole Testifies He Told His Girlfriend He Was Covering for Griffin

The cross: "I don't know nothing," then "I was not involved"

Samuel Shamansky started gently, and the gentleness had a purpose. He walked Cole through a boyhood, a friendship, and a long list of debts to Andrew Griffin. Then he walked him through what his life is now. Life in the federal system means life. His appeals are done. He hasn't seen his daughters since 2019. No hunting, no fishing, no weddings, no funerals. A man in that position, Shamansky suggested, will say whatever buys him a way out.

Then he went to the first time detectives came to see Cole, in an Oklahoma jail in July 2024. Cole told them he didn't know anything and wanted his lawyer. On the stand he put a twist on it: "I don't know nothing" is a double negative, he said, so it means he knew something. Shamansky wasn't interested in grammar. He played the jury a recording of Cole talking to detectives, twice, and on the second pass Cole conceded the voice was his and the words were "I was not involved."

WATCH: PT 24Defense Plays the Tape Where Griffin's Friend Said He Was Not Involved

Then the second interview, December 18, 2024, in Belmont County, after Cole was brought here on a writ without warning and appointed a local lawyer. In that interview, Shamansky read, Cole told detectives that if he took the stand at trial, he'd be "for him, not against him." He asked them for "a number instead of a letter," meaning a sentence of years instead of life. He was told Ohio would call the federal prosecutors in Oklahoma. He signed the immunity letter the next day.

CLIP · LIVE NOV 8, 4:15 PM ETGriffin's Lawyer Confronts Brett Cole With the Detectives' Pitch to Cooperate

And then Shamansky read the passage that I think should bother anybody who cares how a case gets built. Thirty-three minutes into that December interview, a detective told Cole that Griffin went up there with a .22 revolver and killed them both. That was before Cole had said a word about a .22. Cole's answer on the stand: "If you say so." Shamansky: "I do say so."

CLIPGriffin's Friend Admits on Cross He Was Offered a Chance at Parole

On redirect the State put the dates in order and had Cole read the last line of his own phone records: September 21, 7:02 a.m. Central, an incoming call from the prepaid phone's number. He didn't recognize it then and he didn't recognize it now. That's the call he says was Griffin, a few hours out, telling him he was on his way back.

FULL TESTIMONYBrett Cole: Full Testimony, the Immunized Friend Who Says He Helped Plan the Salsa Joe's Murders

The people who heard it in 2021

If the State's case had ended with Brett Cole, I'd have a much harder time with this verdict. It didn't. The afternoon of Day 6 belonged to three people whose accounts reach back to 2021, years before any immunity deal existed.

Philip Broadwater owns hunting land in Big Cedar, Oklahoma, across the road from Brett Cole's grandfather, who introduced him to Griffin in the spring of 2022. Griffin, he said, volunteered that his business partner in Ohio had turned up dead, and then volunteered something stranger: back in Oklahoma, he'd put a tracking device on Tom's vehicle. If you remember Day 5, the jury saw a Tracki tracker on Griffin's account, nicknamed "Tom," following Tom's car in May 2021. Here was a hunting neighbor saying Griffin told him about it himself.

Then Broadwater described a visit when Griffin showed up stressed about his marriage. What was his wife saying? She was telling the FBI, Griffin said, "that I went to Ohio on a motorcycle and killed those two people." Broadwater also heard two different answers to where Griffin was that weekend: working the oil field in West Texas, and later, on his tractor in Oklahoma. Then Griffin left the country, called him from a number Broadwater believed was in Nicaragua with a story about being shot at off Interstate 20, and, asked whether the police had anything on him, said they were "definitely not going to find a murder weapon on me."

CLIPFriend Testifies Griffin Said They Won't Find a Murder Weapon on Him CLIPNeighbor Says Griffin's Alibi Went From an Oil Field to His Tractor

The defense had a real answer, and I want to give it its due. By Broadwater's own account to police, Griffin was facing domestic charges in Oklahoma, and Broadwater had told him that was no reason to leave the country. So the trouble Griffin was running from, in Broadwater's telling, was a case at home. The State came back with something I didn't expect: as soon as Griffin first told him about the Ohio murders, Broadwater found the Belmont County Sheriff's Office number online and called twice. Nobody called him back.

CLIPGriffin's Hunting Buddy Says He Called the Sheriff Twice With No Reply FULL TESTIMONYPhilip Broadwater: Full Testimony, What Griffin Told His Hunting Buddy

Aimy Chase was Cole's girlfriend in 2021. That September she found a second cell phone vibrating under the edge of the bed at his mother's house and figured she'd caught him cheating. Cole told her it was Andrew's phone, and why he had it: Andrew and his business partner were in a dispute, the partner had taken his money and was threatening his family, and Andrew was going to "get him before he got him." Her account from 2021 lines up with what Cole told the jury that morning, and she heard it long before anybody offered Cole anything. The defense asked her nothing.

FULL TESTIMONYAmy Chase: Full Testimony, The Second Phone She Was Told Was Griffin's

Then Colton Karr, Cole's younger brother, gave the jury something nobody else had. Around September 2021, at their grandfather's place, he saw a black and chrome motorcycle with saddlebags, and his brother and Andrew Griffin were taking the windshield off it together. He'd always wanted a bike like that and asked about buying it. "They both told me that I didn't want no part of that one." Until that moment, every account of Griffin with that motorcycle came through Brett Cole. This one put Griffin's own hands on it. Karr also described a night, before Brett went to jail, when his brother cried as he told him Andrew rode the bike to Ohio and killed a man and a woman over money. The defense asked him nothing either.

FULL TESTIMONYColton Karr: Full Testimony, What His Brother Told Him About Ohio

The man who wouldn't talk, and the jury that never knew

Then something happened that the jury never saw, and I think it's one of the most important moments of the trial.

With the jurors sent to their room, the State called Dalton Ray. Ray is the friend who went with Cole to buy the motorcycle, whose photograph loading that bike onto a trailer the jury had already seen, who lived in the camper on Griffin's land with Cole that summer. He is also the man convicted of obstruction for lying to investigators in this case, at a trial this same judge presided over. The State told the judge what it believed Ray could say: the trip to Texas, some of the plan, where Cole was that weekend.

Judge Chris Berhalter explained his rights slowly. Asked whether he'd answer the State's questions, Ray said: "I'll plead the fifth." The State filed a motion on the spot, and the judge granted Ray transactional immunity, which, as the judge explained it, means he could never be prosecuted for anything he testified about. That is a stronger shield than Brett Cole's agreement gave Cole. Then the judge asked again whether he'd testify.

"Um, I want to plead the fifth. I don't want to answer this question."

The judge held him in contempt and gave him until closing arguments to change his mind. He never did.

WATCH: PT 25Brett Cole's Friend Refuses to Testify Even With Immunity CLIPBrett Cole's Friend Takes the Fifth and Lands in Contempt

Think about what that means. Ray is the only person besides Brett Cole who was on the trip to buy the bike and at the camper that weekend, the one other man who could have said whether Cole stayed in Oklahoma with Griffin's phone and whether Griffin was gone. The State wanted him to back Cole up. With a guarantee he could never be charged, he still wouldn't say a word. The law is clear that a jury doesn't get to hear a witness take the Fifth, and the judge handled it correctly. But when we talk about what a jury saw, this is the hole in the middle of the picture, and twelve people deliberated without knowing it was there.

NO BREAKS: DAY 6 · LIVE NOV 8, 8:00 PM ETSalsa Joe's Murders Trial Day 6, No Breaks Edition: Brett Cole's Immunity Testimony TOP MOMENTS: DAY 6The Salsa Joe's Murders: Griffin Trial Day 6 Top Moments / A Plan, a Deal, Contempt

The chief detective, and the bottom of the pile

Day 7, Tuesday, November 3, was Election Day, and the State had one witness left: Chief Detective Ryan Allar of the Belmont County Sheriff's Office, who has worked there since 1996 and ran this case from the morning of the fire.

He took the jury through the house the way an investigator reads it. No forced entry; every door locked except the back door, the one that led to where the bodies were. Drawers and cabinets open, as if someone was searching or wanted it to look that way. Burned and half-burned cash in the debris where Tom lay, which told him whoever did this didn't take that money. Bullets from both autopsies, all the same small caliber, which he took to be .22.

Then the line that explains how this case sat for years. In the first days, detectives looked at Griffin, because he was the partner and there had been a falling out. They pulled his phone records and his social media and saw a man posting on Snapchat with his phone in Oklahoma. "So at that point, we put him on the bottom of our pile," Allar said. If Brett Cole is telling the truth, the alibi he says he built worked exactly as designed, on the very detectives who would later build the case.

WATCH: PT 26Chief Detective Says the Burner Phone and Motorcycle Were Never Public

Allar then told the jury something I want to flag, because nobody objected and I think somebody should have. When Griffin moved up the pile and Allar started calling him, Griffin never called back. And when Allar pulled fresh phone records, he said, he saw that "immediately after I would call him, he would place a call to a local attorney." Picking up the phone to call a lawyer when a detective is calling you is a constitutional right. It is not evidence of anything, and it came in as if it meant something. The defense let it go by. I don't think this verdict turned on it, but a fair process isn't measured by whether the State would have won anyway.

Then the hunt. Griffin left for Costa Rica, came back, and was arrested in Texas on charges unrelated to this case. When Allar went to the Texas jail to take his DNA, he said, Griffin "came out, he was clutching a Bible, sweating profusely." The burner's trail: bought at a Walmart in Marion, Illinois, registered to a James Jobe at a Knoxville duplex where the owner and neighbors had never heard of him. The toll bridge over the Ohio River, where the first search found nothing and a second look in January 2026 found a motorcycle crossing at the burner's minute, 10:52 that Sunday night. And the wiretap in July 2024, when the detectives' trip to Oklahoma "seemed to poke the bear," and Griffin started making threats against his wife's life.

CLIPDetective Admits He Told Brett Cole the Motorcycle and Phone Evidence

Then the prosecutor had Allar do the most important thing the State's last witness could do. He listed what the detectives already had before Brett Cole signed anything. The bridge photograph. The motorcycle. The burner and its tower data. Cory White, the Facebook messages about the sale and White's photographs. Phil Broadwater, Colton Karr, Aimy Chase, Tommy Williamson, Arthur Cole. None of them asked for immunity for Cole or for themselves. That was the State's answer to the whole Monday cross: Cole didn't build this case, he walked into one that was already built.

Then Allar told the jury Cole knew things the sheriff's office never made public: the unlocked back door, where Tom and Angela were sitting, how many times each was shot and where, that Tom was shot first in the back and questioned about the money before he was killed. And then he volunteered the one piece of Cole's account he could not back up. Cole said Griffin told him Stacy Griffin was in on the planning. Allar said he found no evidence of that at all. I respect a detective who says that out loud. It's the kind of honesty that makes the rest of what he says easier to weigh.

CLIPDetective Says Brett Cole Knew What Even the Victims' Families Weren't Told

Now the cross, because this is where Shamansky hit hardest. He read Allar's own words back to him from the start of that December interview, nineteen seconds in: "We know you bought that motorcycle for Andrew with Dalton Ray. We know that you kept Andrew's phone at your house and sent some text messages on it." And, he read on, "three or four people that have given sworn statements about conversations you have had with them." Did he say that?

"Yes, sir, I did."

So the bike, the phone and the witnesses all went to Cole before Cole gave them anything. And Shamansky showed that the caliber was in the detectives' own questions too: Allar had asked Stacy Griffin in 2023 whether Andrew or anybody ran around with a .22.

Here's where I come down on this. You don't hand a cooperating witness the story you're hoping he'll tell you. You let him tell it, and then you check it. That December interview did it backwards, and the defense was right to make the jury sit with it. What saved the State, in my opinion, is that the facts it says Cole could not have known, the wounds and the order of the shots, are not the facts the detective fed him. More on that in a minute, because the defense had an answer to that too.

The rest of the cross pointed the jury at other people: Tom flashed cash, a man named Jeremy Evans had his phone near the house that night, there was a bar video and an old FBI file. On redirect the State closed each door. Evans was arrested, his phone and accounts searched, and two guns he carried were test-fired against the autopsy bullets. They weren't the weapon.

WATCH: PT 27Detective Rules Out the Defense's Other Suspects as the State Rests FULL TESTIMONYDetective Ryan Allar: Full Testimony, the Man Who Built the Salsa Joe's Murders Case

The State rests, and the defense calls one witness

The State rested at 11:30. Out of the jury's presence, Shamansky moved for acquittal on every count, the motion Ohio requires a judge to rule on when the State closes, and the judge overruled it: the State had met its burden on every element. He did it again at the close of all the evidence.

WATCH: PT 28Judge Denies Griffin's Acquittal Motion on Every Count

The charge conference told you something about where the defense's head was. One small choice I noticed: on the gun specification, the standard instruction says the defendant had a firearm and used it, while the statute says or. Both sides agreed to keep "and," the harder version for the State. Nobody fought over it.

Then a surprise. The defense called one witness, and it was Angela's father. Something in Allar's testimony about details never being made public had struck the defense, and over lunch they checked it. In May 2023, about a year and a half before Brett Cole sat down with detectives, Angela's father did a podcast interview. Wanting to move the case along, he told the host what he'd been told: that it happened in the evening, that Angela was sitting on the end of the couch with her vape and her drink, that both were shot the same way, two to the body and one to the head, and that the fire was set in three or four places. Shamansky apologized for putting him through it and was done in a few minutes.

WATCH: PT 29Defense Rests After Angela's Father Confirms His Podcast Account CLIPAngela's Father Confirms Sharing Crime Scene Details on a 2023 Podcast FULL TESTIMONYAngela's Father: Full Testimony on His 2023 Podcast

It was a smart move, and it cut both ways. Yes, some of the scene was public before Cole talked. But the podcast got the wounds wrong. Tom was the only one shot in the body, and only once, in the back. Angela took three shots, all to the head. The details Cole gave matched the autopsies, not the podcast. The State made exactly that point in rebuttal.

Then the defense rested. Andrew Griffin did not testify, which is his constitutional right, and the judge told the jury they could not consider it for any purpose.

The law the jury carried into that room

I always tell you to listen to the charge, because the charge is the case. Here's what this one said, in the judge's own words where it matters.

Reasonable doubt, Ohio's way: "Reasonable doubt is present when the jurors, after they have carefully considered and compared all the evidence, cannot say they are firmly convinced of the truth of the charges." So the jury wasn't solving a mystery. It was deciding whether the State's proof left it firmly convinced.

Then, before any count, the instruction this trial was always going to need. "The testimony of an accomplice does not become inadmissible because of his complicity, moral turpitude, or self-interest, but the admitted or claimed complicity of a witness may affect his credibility and may make his testimony subject to grave suspicion," and it has to be "weighed with great caution." Everybody in that room knew whose testimony that was about. Notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say throw him out. It says look for proof that doesn't come from him, and weigh him against it.

Then the counts. The State charged each death two ways, and you need to understand both to understand the verdict.

Counts one and two say Griffin purposely killed Angela and Tom with prior calculation and design. That's Ohio's planning element, and the judge defined it: the decision to kill reached in advance, by a definite process of reasoning, with enough time to plan it. And this is the line I'd have argued over: "But acting on the spur of the moment or after momentary consideration of the purpose to cause the death is not sufficient."

Counts three and four charge the same two deaths another way: that Griffin purposely killed them while committing a trespass in their home. No planning element at all. A trespass means going in without privilege, and privilege can come from a license, a grant or a relationship. Both theories are aggravated murder in Ohio, with the same range of punishment.

Count five, the arson, only asked whether he knowingly caused physical harm to an occupied home by fire. And there was no lesser charge, no plain murder, for the jury to fall back on. The defense was all-in on one question: who was on that bike.

The State's closing: the records Brett Cole never touched

The prosecutor, Joe Vavra, told the jury he wouldn't walk them through the elements, because the only real question was who. Then he built his whole argument on what doesn't depend on Brett Cole, and I think it was a very good closing.

The motorcycle. Cory White's photographs from the sale are timestamped, and at those same minutes Cole was on the phone with Griffin: four calls between 3:12 and 3:39 that afternoon, every one reaching Griffin's phone on the tower near his home in Whitesboro.

The burner, bought at 5:05 that Sunday afternoon in Marion, Illinois, and on the road by 5:48, while Griffin's own phone sat in Hugo near Cole's place. The bridge at Louisville at 10:52 that night, with a motorcycle crossing at the burner's minute: no plate, a backpack hanging where a plate would be, just what Cole said he told Griffin to do. The burner circling the Strussion house all day on the 20th, still there at 11:18 that night, gone west at 11:37. Then the road home, the one call it ever made, to Cole from Jackson, Tennessee, and its last trace in Benton, Arkansas, at 10:40 that Tuesday morning.

Then the silence, which is the piece I keep coming back to. On Saturday, Griffin's phone made calls like any phone. On Sunday and Monday it made no call and answered no call. His mother called, Tom's sister Lisa Balog called, friends called, all to voicemail. The first outgoing call came at 1:48 on Tuesday afternoon, about three hours after the burner died in Benton, which is roughly the drive from Benton to Griffin's house. Cole told detectives his instructions were to text only Stacy and answer nothing, and the records line up with him.

And then the quietest fact in the trial. In two months of Cole's own bank records, he was at the Shell station in Hugo eleven times, including $59 there on September 13. In roughly two years of Griffin's bank records, there is exactly one purchase at that Shell: $59, on September 20, the day the State says Griffin was in Ohio. It was the only transaction on his account those three days, and both sides stipulated to it. Nobody planned for that charge to be noticed.

CLIP · LIVE NOV 8, 1:45 PM ETProsecutor Tells Jurors to Do the Math on Griffin's Silent Phone WATCH: PT 30Prosecutor Tells Jury Brett Cole's Guilty Knowledge Points to Griffin

He went through the three alibis Griffin gave, West Texas, his tractor, the Poteau Mountains, while his phone sat in Hugo the whole time. He reminded them of the wiretaps, Griffin telling his mother that if he got these charges, "I'll start clearing house." And then he went through the people the defense's conspiracy theory would need, one by one, ending with Brett's grandfather, Arthur Cole, who heard Griffin say on the phone that he had to go get his money and killed two people. "I don't know if there's a more genuine soul on the planet," the prosecutor said.

Shamansky asked to approach, and the judge struck that line and told the jury not to consider it for any purpose: deciding whether a witness is believable is the jury's job alone, not the State's and not the defense's. That's a cure done right, and it was done fast.

I'd put the wiretap point on the State's side of the ledger, though. Those calls were ugly. They were also anger at Stacy in 2024, and anger at an ex-wife in 2024 is not proof of a trip to Ohio in 2021. The State leaned on them in a closing that didn't need them.

The defense's closing: "Who's on that motorcycle?"

Shamansky did a good job in a hard spot, and I'll say so plainly. He conceded what the State had proved well: the electronic evidence shows Brett Cole and Dalton Ray bought a motorcycle. And then he asked the only question he had left. Who was on it?

His answers were real ones. Nothing physical from the house ties to Griffin: one fingerprint and one glove profile never matched anybody, and Griffin was excluded from both. No gun, no eyewitness. The bridge picture shows a rider you can't identify, who could be any man with a mustache, Brett Cole included. The helmet DNA came from two small private labs, one of which flipped its answer after learning another program had included him, and the analyst who produced the 1.52 million figure couldn't vouch for how the sample was collected. "Collection is king," he told them. The details weren't secret: the podcast was out there, and the detective fed Cole the bike and the phone in the first nineteen seconds. And the whole road to Griffin on that motorcycle runs through a man serving life for crimes against children, who said "I don't know nothing" until he was offered something.

Then he asked about Dalton Ray. "I'm gonna ask you again, where's Dalton Ray? Who's on that motorcycle?"

WATCH: PT 31Griffin's Lawyer Asks if Jurors Would Trust Brett Cole as Closings End CLIP · LIVE NOV 8, 3:45 PM ETGriffin's Lawyer Says There's No Gun or DNA Then the State Fires Back

He asked it three times. Here is my honest read. The point underneath it is fair: Ray was there for the bike purchase, and nobody but Cole puts Griffin on that motorcycle. But Shamansky was in the room when Ray pleaded the Fifth. He knew exactly where Dalton Ray was, and why the jury never heard from him. Asking twelve people a question they couldn't know the answer to, and couldn't be told, walked right up to the edge of what a closing argument is allowed to do. Nobody objected. I think the State should have.

He ended asking whether they'd "bet the farm" on the word of a child rapist, a liar and an opportunist.

The State's rebuttal was the line I think the jury carried into that room. The defense had asked who would ever rely on Brett Cole in the most important of their affairs, and the prosecutor answered: "that's the man he trusted with his phone and with his alibi." You can distrust Brett Cole all you want. Griffin's own phone records say he trusted him.

NO BREAKS: DAY 7 · LIVE NOV 9, 8:00 PM ETSalsa Joe's Murders Trial Day 7, No Breaks Edition: Defense Rests, Then Closings TOP MOMENTS: DAY 7The Salsa Joe's Murders: Griffin Trial Day 7 Top Moments / Unreleased Details, a Podcast, Closings

Five hours, and five guilty verdicts

On Wednesday morning, November 4, Judge Berhalter finished the instructions. All twelve must agree on every count. Pick a foreperson whose vote counts no more than anyone's. Don't walk in and announce your verdict, don't dig in out of pride, and don't give up an honest belief just to get along. The two alternates were thanked and released. At about 9:21 the twelve went to the jury room.

WATCH: PT 32Judge Sends Griffin's Jury to Deliberate on Five Counts CLIPJudge Tells Griffin's Jury All 12 Must Agree on Every Count

No question came out of that room. At about 2:20 that afternoon, roughly five hours later, the jury sent word that it had verdicts. Before they came in, the judge spoke to the gallery, where the Strussions' family had sat for two weeks, and asked them to keep the dignity they'd shown a few minutes more. The foreperson was juror number 49. "Mr. Griffin, if you'll stand at this time, sir." And the judge read the forms himself.

Count one, the aggravated murder of Angela Strussion with prior calculation and design: guilty, with the gun. Count two, Tom: guilty, with the gun. Count three, Angela, during a trespass in her home: guilty, with the gun. Count four, Tom: guilty, with the gun. Count five, the arson: guilty.

The defense asked for a poll and asked that it be done all at once. The judge read the whole set back and went juror by juror. Twelve times the answer was yes.

WATCH: PT 33Every Juror Confirms Andrew Griffin Guilty on All Five Counts

Where I come down

Their verdict is the one that decides this case, and it's unanimous on every line. Here's mine, and I'll show you what it rests on.

On the man, I'm with them. I think the State proved Andrew Griffin made that trip, and it proved it with records Brett Cole never touched. Cole didn't make the tower records. He didn't take the bridge picture, and he couldn't have known in 2024 that the toll company still had it. He didn't write Griffin's bank statement with one Shell charge on it. He didn't make Griffin's phone go silent for two days and come back to life three hours from where the burner died. He didn't put four calls on the records during the bike sale. He didn't buy a tracker named Tom on Griffin's card in May 2021. And Aimy Chase, Colton Karr, Phil Broadwater and Arthur Cole heard what they heard long before there was any deal to buy. The accomplice instruction told the jury to look for proof that doesn't come from Cole. There was plenty of it.

The helmet, I'd have set aside. I said it after Day 5 and I'll say it again: the order of events at the first lab was a bigger problem than any number, and Cole himself told the jury that helmet went around his racing friends. The State didn't need it, and I don't think the jury did either.

Now Angela's planning count. On Tom, I think the State proved prior calculation cold: a tracker bought on Griffin's card following Tom's car months earlier, a thousand-mile ride with a revolver, a shot in the back before the questions. That's a plan by anybody's measure. On Angela, I'd have held the State short. Its own witness, Brett Cole, said she was never part of the plan. She came off the couch toward the man, and she was shot right there. The judge told the jury that "momentary consideration" is not enough. To me that reads like a decision made in seconds. The jury read it another way, and the likeliest road is this: a man who carries a loaded revolver into an occupied house at night has planned for whoever is in it. The instruction leaves room for that reading, and twelve people took it.

And here's what people miss. Count three already reached Angela without any planning at all. It only asked whether Griffin purposely killed her while trespassing in her home, and it carries the same punishment. So the planning fight over Angela was never the cliff it looked like. If the jury had stopped short on count one, count three was waiting. That's how a prosecutor builds a safety net, and this one was built on the first morning of trial, when the death penalty came off and these five counts stayed.

Was the process fair? I think the judge ran a careful courtroom. He struck the "known associate" label when an FBI agent used it, ruled on the acquittal motions on the spot both times, gave the accomplice warning in full, walked Dalton Ray through his rights with care, and cured the "genuine soul" line the minute it was raised. But I'd put three things on the State's side of the ledger. The chief detective told this jury that Griffin called a lawyer after every one of his calls, as if that meant something, and nobody objected. The State leaned on wiretap rage at an ex-wife from 2024 that said nothing about the Strussions. And a detective handed Brett Cole the bones of the story, the bike, the phone, the witnesses and the .22, before Cole gave them any of his own. None of that, in my opinion, was the reason for this verdict. The tower records, the bridge picture, the silent phone and the people from 2021 did that work. But you don't measure a fair process by whether the State would have won anyway, and I'm not going to pretend those three things didn't happen.

And Dalton Ray. A man offered complete immunity chose contempt over telling a jury what he knew about that bike. The jury never learned it happened. I don't know what Ray would have said, and neither does anybody else outside that camper. That's the one hole in this record nobody will ever fill.

What comes next

The judge ordered a presentence investigation and victim impact statements, and said he wants both in hand before he imposes anything. Sentencing is set for Tuesday, December 1, at 1:30 in the afternoon, in the same courtroom. It was almost November 24 until the prosecutor remembered he has a trial in another county that week.

Death was never a possible sentence once the State dropped it before openings. For each murder, the judge said, the choices run from life with parole eligibility after twenty years up to life without parole. The two counts for each victim are two theories of the same killing, so expect them to merge into one aggravated murder for Tom and one for Angela. The gun findings carry their own mandatory time, and how those survive the merger and stack is for the judge to settle. Griffin is held without bond until then.

CLIPJudge Orders Andrew Griffin Held Without Bond Until Sentencing

The judge told Griffin directly that he can put his own statement in the report and can speak on December 1 before sentence is passed, and that he won't be penalized if he chooses to say nothing. "Yes, Your Honor," Griffin answered. After sentencing comes the appeal, and that's part of the process too. The two rulings I'd watch are the judge letting the TrueAllele helmet result in over the defense's standing objection, and his ruling letting Stacy Griffin repeat what her husband told her during the marriage.

NO BREAKS: DAY 8Salsa Joe's Murders Trial Day 8, No Breaks Edition: Griffin Found Guilty TOP MOMENTS: DAY 8The Salsa Joe's Murders: Griffin Trial Day 8 Top Moments / Final Charge, Guilty, Sentencing Set

Tom and Angela Strussion were killed in their own living room, and their family sat in that courtroom through every day of this trial. Angela's birthday was two days away. They are the reason any of this matters.

This was a case built on paper around a witness nobody could trust, and the paper held. I want to hear from you on this one. Think about everything that went into that jury room. Which piece carried it for you: the phone records, the bridge picture, Brett Cole, or the people who heard it in 2021? And on Angela's planning count, would you have gone where this jury went?

We'll be in that courtroom on December 1.