- yesterday
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🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Despite their flair for the dramatic a group of theater kids never expected to
00:10find themselves at the center of a murder investigation yet suddenly they're in the
00:17spotlight for all the wrong reasons and with a killer on the loose could one of
00:25them be cast as the next victim
00:46I haven't been here since high school we hosted prom here they did school plays
00:54here they did local plays here so I feel a positive energy when I come here but it
01:03also does make me a little sad and nostalgic to think about all the good
01:10times that I've had in here and makes me miss those times no one could really
01:20believe what happened and and I think we all just kind of fell apart
01:29I'm
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05:34the audience there is truly nothing like the opening night of a show
05:44it just really feels like wow like we we did this we pulled it off
05:51and it's pretty typical for there just to always be a party after every performance
05:57there's music playing and swimming and there's nothing like it you know
06:13it was always so fun but that night something felt off something felt wrong
06:17i was driving down i-60 in the morning and i noticed because jesse's house sat right beside
06:31the highway that there were a bunch of police officers there that was obviously peculiar
06:37because this is hartford wisconsin there's not you know five cop cars sitting outside of someone's
06:45house ever i got a call from my girlfriend amelia and she basically said something to the effect of
06:55there's a bunch of cop cars outside of jesse's house do you know anything and i said no i didn't
07:04and i actually texted jesse saying everything all right
07:08all right our first reaction was to like text and call her and i never got a response and that got
07:18increasingly alarming throughout the day it was very unlike her we tried to call her parents and no one
07:25was answering so we didn't know what to do other than to drive over to the house ourselves
07:30and we just went up to their doorstep knocked on their door and jesse's parents came out and
07:40they simply said that jesse was no longer with us
07:46just shock was going through my mind i didn't believe that she was no longer with us
07:51after i heard that jesse was gone i don't really know where along the line it became apparent what
08:02could end a person at 19 and there are only a couple of options
08:10so we cycled through those options as hypotheticals at first and i think that we were listening to a
08:16police scanner at a restaurant that a ton of her friends just went to to kind of coalesce grieve
08:26because we knew that she was gone and on that police scanner we heard some codes for homicide and
08:34a code for rape it felt like the world stopped
08:40but at the same time it felt like everything was moving 100 miles an hour
08:51you know i was just absolutely distraught
08:57hartford's a really small town i remember thinking like how did this happen here you're just so scared
09:04and you just don't know who did it and and you don't know if someone's going to be next
09:19i think there's some messages in these songs like some crazy messages
09:50if you understand that it was written right before this girl was murdered
09:56she loved music and she was good at it but music was bigger than that to her it was more than just
10:03something she loved it was going to be her vehicle to change the world she was a 19 year old who
10:10believed she believed she could and um this is all we have of it
10:22jesse's mom came home around 12 30 and found jesse
10:26she found jesse she called the emps my daughter is blue i went to wake her up
10:34and i just got home for lunch and she won't wake up okay so is she breathing i don't think so no
10:43and then she called me there was an emotional intensity in her voice and her words that i'd never
10:50heard before and she was just saying honey it's jesse it's jesse it's jesse
11:01and then joy broke down sobbing and couldn't say anything
11:04the whole block was full of washington county sheriffs and ambulance fire truck crime scene unit
11:15vehicle squad cars hartford pd da's office personnel
11:19and i knew that she was dead
11:29all i wanted was to get to jesse you know all i wanted was to hold her and
11:37just be with her and i still needed to hold her and talk to her
11:42tell her i'd love her forever and never forget her
11:49so this picture was i believe the first picture i ever took with jesse this was the hello dolly
11:59backstage at the shower arts center this picture is of the last day i spent with jesse
12:09we went with our friend kelly to summerfest which is a music festival in milwaukee
12:15um after jesse passed away i was i was really you know gutted jesse was just like everything i wanted
12:25to be being so confident and just free-spirited
12:33and then friends were calling me asking me what happened and i was like i don't know
12:38we weren't sure if there was a killer on the loose it really felt like the world was ending
12:49prior to jesse blodgett's murder we hadn't had a homicide in almost 30 years
12:53i was at home cutting my grass my phone rang they said that a young lady was found in bed and that
13:11they ended up seeing some ligature marks on her neck and they wanted me to come and investigate it
13:16i remember in the immediate aftermath of learning what had happened it became tough to conceptualize
13:26who could have done this thing every person that surrounded jesse was of what i thought to be great
13:32character because she bonded with great people so every stranger was a suspect
13:39and every person on the street could be guilty just knowing like it literally could be anybody i've
13:50never been so scared ever in my entire life frankly people didn't believe it could be one of our neighbors
14:09so when i showed up on scene one of the first things that struck me when i walked into the house
14:15is nothing appeared to be displaced no windows were broken whoever entered the house knew their way
14:22around and they were there for a purpose anyone that knew her just wasn't in my head as a suspect
14:30because what's the reason but you have to look at everyone and especially in the cacophony of you know
14:38people speculating after it happened nobody really cares about the feelings of any one individual
14:45it was just a lot of rumors flying around thought it might have been people working in their yard
14:50maybe it was someone that she worked with because her work was so close to her house am i a suspect
14:57because we all watch tv you know and they often look at family first
15:01jesse blodger wasn't someone who was living on the fringes or somebody that was putting themselves in
15:11bad positions this was somebody who was doing everything correctly
15:18and because we didn't immediately have a suspect that caused a lot of concern because if there is
15:23somebody out there my daughter could she be next when the police asked about possible suspects i i was
15:31thinking of anything i could and jesse called the cast of fiddler on the roof her second family that's how
15:38she felt about them but she came home from the cast party a little after midnight and something was
15:45troubling her i was asleep when she came home but her mom was up and jesse mentioned that there was a
15:53couple guys at the cast party who were flirting with her more than she was comfortable with
15:59i heard that there was a man that she was in fiddler in the roof with who was suspicious
16:12i was having like bad feelings about the cast member even before she was killed it was very clear
16:20that there was like some sort of a like attraction like flirtatious behaviors
16:26people considered other cast members i think people considered the director um there was a ton of
16:35gossip we were speaking to everybody that was involved in community theater or part of the cast
16:44and there was a lot of paranoia in the theater group it was truly like wow what if it is somebody
16:51that's associated with fiddle around the roof every person that surrounded jesse could be guilty and
16:59that sort of aggressive paranoia is something that i've never really felt before or since the thought
17:07really intensified everybody's paranoia and anxiety you know just like overnight you can have accusations
17:15flying at you
17:2719 year old jesse blodgett was a shining star
17:34but her killer remains a mystery is the murderer a stranger
17:40a neighbor
17:44or an actor pretending to be a close friend
17:53oh good to see you buddy
17:57how the hell are you ah man it's it's been a weird week for me honestly
18:02i hear songs a lot where i feel like i think that sounds like jesse you guys wrote a pretty cool
18:13song together we wrote several cool songs together actually i'm gonna forget if i don't say now i just
18:20got a text from joy two minutes before you came telling me to make sure to tell you that she loved you
18:27oh i miss joy that actually reminds me about the day that it all happened we didn't really consider
18:35what your guys's thoughts were on the time i feel like like in the immediate wake of the news we kind
18:41of all just like traveled into your door while you guys were trying to grieve i'm so glad you brought this
18:46up when when it happened and our house filled up with you know da's office washington county sheriff's hartford pd
18:55first responders but then all of a sudden they just like that they were gone
19:03and i stared out the picture window i have no idea to this day how long and it but all of a sudden i saw
19:08a movement down past the apple trees by the road and i believe it was you wasn't it yeah i don't think
19:15i've ever said this to you but everyone was shocked and they didn't know what to do it was her friends
19:26it was you guys that just came over you didn't care what was right or wrong to do you weren't
19:33thinking about that you just came over i don't know if that was the right decision where's that box of
19:38kleenex um yeah that was the right decision it was it was i couldn't have taken an empty house for the
19:48rest of that day and you guys filled it up
19:57jesse had a lot of friends i had no idea how many friends this kid had they were coming over and sitting
20:02by the fire with us at night out in our yard and then jesse's case basically exploded on the news
20:12the family of a young actor young aspiring musician devoted her whole life to making music
20:17many couldn't understand why anyone would want 19 year old jessica blodgett dead the picture that
20:22emerged very quickly in the media was this was a very promising young woman being murdered brutally in her
20:29own bed that's scary and whenever something like this happens there are people in the community who
20:37start speculating could it be someone close to her at first the speculation was mostly around the cast
20:45party that she was at but then a couple of other people were questioned once jesse's friends were
20:52questioned by the police that's when the paranoia really set in it certainly wasn't my mind that i
21:00would be brought in for questioning because i had been talking to her in the days leading up to her
21:06passing and i was expecting a call about you know the content of my messages between her and i
21:15and i had no idea what i was going to say at the time it wasn't like formally
21:20interviewed but they asked me a little bit about my background with jesse
21:25it was very scary because it could be anyone it could be our friends it could be a stranger it could
21:31be someone within the inner circle like we had no idea i really hope that people don't have to
21:38feel the way that we felt in those moments
21:40the very next morning i was very scared to be by myself and to not have like my friends around me
21:54so i think it was around like 10 or 11 am amelia picked me and my brother ian and
22:00dan up and went to the blodgett's house altogether we were all talking about jesse reminiscing when dan said
22:11i just got called into the police department
22:16dan's a good kid he's um he's jesse's friend and he said something about the police calling him in for
22:23questioning and jackie and amelia actually left to drive dan to the sheriff's office i imagined that
22:31they were going to be looking into everyone i wasn't concerned with it at all
22:38we couldn't like picture dan being a type of person that did this
22:42you know he was part of a very tight-knit friend group and that's a very uncomfortable place to be
22:51in too you're trying to grieve but you know there's people in the community who are looking
22:56at you and wondering like could you have done it it was just such a confusing time like nothing
23:02truly nothing made sense you're just on edge and all you want to do is figure out who did it
23:12and like you can't help but feel like the police are wasting time
23:33when our friend dan got called in for questioning i remember dropping dan off at the police station
23:40i think dan was back here and i ended up being in shotgun because my other friend amelia ended up
23:48being the driver
23:51you know we expected this to happen like he was going to be questioned because he was close to jesse
23:57and when we dropped him off he said okay um maybe you can come and pick me up in 30 minutes
24:02they assumed just like i did that it was standard procedure there wasn't any gossip about dan because
24:10he wasn't involved in it fiddler on the roof so we drove back to the police station went to pick him
24:16up and we were met outside by a police officer asking if we were there for dan
24:24and we said yeah um we're his friends and we're we're here to pick him up and he had said
24:30we can't release dan he's being detained
24:37so we drive back to the blodgett's house and we had told everyone like oh we we tried to pick
24:42dan up but they said that he's being detained and everyone was like what
24:49like this is still a small town where people know each other and it's kind of a word of mouth
24:56case in that way where word spreads and you know a lot of people knew daniel or they knew
25:03jesse or they knew the families or they'd gone to their plays
25:06he just didn't fit anyone's profile of of a killer i started to get a little worked up i was like
25:15this is ridiculous like he's gonna miss his friend's funeral that's so horrible
25:29man if if you could have seen the service that she had the entire town came out and everyone had a
25:34story i believe these are the exact words i said honey you're my shining star my biggest fan
25:47my greatest teacher this has been a devastating blow but your strength is in me too and love will
25:53always be stronger than hate during jesse's funeral we had all felt like there was still
26:04her killer out there on the loose
26:11i didn't necessarily think that it was someone in our inner circle but i definitely felt like it was
26:16someone that lived in the area and they're just free i remember being at her funeral standing in line
26:25waiting to talk to buck and joy and someone behind me in line was saying
26:31oh did you hear about that girl in the park that got attacked
26:41i was like why would you bring up this other horrible thing
26:44at this funeral where this horrible thing happened
26:46this park is about six miles away from hartford in the village of richfield which are two separate
26:55jurisdictions
26:58a woman by the name of melissa richards came up to get some exercise walk her dog go for a run
27:03a subject approached her with a knife in his hand and attacked her in broad daylight
27:14she fought that attacker off
27:16was able to disarm that attacker get the knife away and she was able to survive the attack
27:20she's fending off a knife blade with a bare hand and she was also very diligent about giving a description
27:30to the police of the young male
27:34early 20s shaggy hair light colored hair and he was driving a blue dodge caravan
27:41a deputy had seen a vehicle similar to the one that was put out as a description
27:48had run it through our database and that's how we ended up honing in on daniel bartelt as the suspect
28:01at that point they're not connecting him to the jesse blodgett homicide
28:05they just want to find out what he knows about the other incident in the park
28:11but when the officer calls and he answers and he's at the home of a teenage girl who was just murdered
28:19in her own bed
28:22you have to be looking at the possibility that dan killed her
28:26we told the police when they asked us about dan um basically it's not dan he's never been in any
28:38trouble with the law or at school that we know of jesse and dan sat right next to each other in school
28:46he was a straight a student he had dropped out of uw stevens point to everybody's amazement
28:53but they would write songs together and they would sing songs together he was welcoming her home
29:02he was just over the day after jesse's murder sharing hugs and memories and tears with us
29:10until his phone rang calling him in for questioning
29:12so when the police began interrogating dan he pretty quickly admits that he was the person who
29:28approached melissa in the park with the knife and you were in your band correct or your bombs man or your
29:33gift and you went after that girl right
29:35he says oh i didn't mean to you know hurt her he says i just wanted to scare her because i felt
29:46scared in my own life however during the interrogation for the homicide he denied
30:00murdering jesse blodgett some closure for mom and dad you help us on that
30:05i heard that on the news that dan attacked the girl in the park prosecutors say martel attacked that
30:15woman jesse described dan as her best friend i remember i was talking to her about reading dorian
30:21gray and jesse said that's my best friend dan's favorite book and that just stuck with me
30:33he idolized this book that was about like this very haunted
30:39conflicted young man but even knowing dan attacked melissa did not
30:47make any sort of sense for why he would do that to jesse
30:53there's just no justification or sense at all
30:59jesse's friends never thought the killer could be one of their own
31:03so
31:05did dan fool them all and commit the ultimate betrayal
31:10or is the true murderer still walking among them
31:13i remember when you were talking about like making the days of your life count right if
31:32we were all in a line in heaven or like as our souls get put into the body and what we would do
31:38of which life to pick yeah her life comes up as like something that would be tragically cut
31:43short in a very violent way but it would go on to inspire a lot of good that i can't believe you
31:49remember i think about that a lot actually i didn't make that up either somebody else said that
31:55but i feel like jesse would have been at the front of the line for that i still think about that and tear
31:59it feels hard but it feels so good to like
32:13reminisce on that connection
32:14it makes you cry but it makes you cry for like the joy of having known this person
32:30i don't think i could have handled that
32:42as a production we didn't know what to do how do we honor
32:46her and like what would she want us to do
32:52what we ended up doing was on the roof they had like a lit candle up there to kind of
32:58commemorate her they said jesse was irreplaceable so there was no fiddler there was just silence
33:06during the fiddler scenes and the candle on the roof
33:09her family came then i'll never forget hearing them cry when the the lights turn off
33:20i just remember the emotional intensity of it and how proud i was of her how she touched people
33:27that's kind of the chilling part because this is a young woman you wouldn't expect to cross paths
33:40with a killer
33:43it was 16 days until the hartford police announced their investigation was over and they had their
33:49person but they kept me updated every single day come on in let me tell you what we got now
33:56this is in real time what was unfolding in woodlawn park
34:03during the interview with dan bartell we learned that he had come to this park
34:09at some point during the day that jesse blodgett was murdered
34:18we realized that we do have video in this park so we were able to get a copy of that video
34:23which subsequently showed daniel walking through the park on the day that jesse was murdered
34:33he's got his backpack with him he was walking through the park he was hovering around garbage cans
34:38inside this trash can at woodlawn park here we located a cereal box that had inside it i refer
34:50to it as a kill kit it had the ligature that was used to strangle jesse had a wall gag it had some
34:56blood evidence it had some hair evidence it had dna matches to both jesse
35:03and to daniel bartelt this investigation has determined that on the morning of july 15 2013
35:09daniel joseph hanks martelt intentionally caused the death of miss jesse blodgett
35:19when dan was charged with murdering jesse it it ramped up the media attention on it police here
35:27have announced an arrest he's accused of killing a fellow musician because i mean he's a 19 year old
35:33successful high school student you know had been a straight a student a theater kid all of this and
35:39you know it wasn't the expected twist if you can't trust your friend then who can you trust
35:46the person who i had suspected it being was wrong i do feel guilty for feeling so strongly but before
35:58we knew it was truly like wow it could be anybody our first reaction wasn't um you know we hate this
36:08kid it was oh my god what happened to dan i think before this incident i've always had this prevailing
36:16notion that evil is born and it doesn't come to be i don't believe that anymore
36:27looking at dan as i knew him this charismatic this funny this charming guy
36:33next to what he ended up doing to my friend looks like a huge drop
36:38but i think we exist in shades and you get grayer and grayer as you kind of cascade into this this
36:49place where these kinds of things are no longer reprehensible actions but something that you feel
36:57compelled to do
36:58i think when he had dropped out of college he became close with jesse and he became
37:11involved in her world and and thought that he could do it without getting caught i think that thought
37:18intrigued him and because he had those thoughts he kind of grew it into an obsession
37:23i think that under the weight of his expectations for life he did not measure up and that sent him on
37:33this slow kind of fall from grace so to cope with this idea that he wasn't as special as he thought he was
37:46he began gravitating towards more and more stimulating violence
37:54they were best friends she trusted him i remember writing in a journal that summer
37:59i'm not mad at dan dan is sick and i don't know if i still feel that way but i'm in awe of the empathy
38:07i had for him they say hurt people hurt people but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable
38:16so in august 2014 the trial started and there was a lot of media interest this evidence just keeps
38:22piling up bartel's defense calls it circumstantial evidence and i think it increased seeing this young
38:27man who continued to adamantly deny that he murdered his friend this jumpsuit that i'm wearing these
38:36shackles that i'm put in don't make me guilty he looked at jesse's parents and addressed the court
38:45and pleaded his innocence and when the judge had a chance to speak the judge said you're right
38:53the jumpsuit and the shackles don't make you guilty dna evidence does and you're guilty
38:59boom gavel he was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole
39:05i can't make him face what he did and tell the truth about it but i that doesn't mean i can't love
39:18and forgive him 500 people showed up at the mill pond in hartford lit candles we all walked together
39:25in the night and everybody had on a blue wristband all of which said the five words from the funeral
39:33love is greater than hate and i consider it jesse's purpose
39:41thank god i have something to work on to fill that void but the void's too big to be filled
39:50what do i miss about jesse everything
39:54i think justice especially for jesse and her parents is just talking about jesse and celebrating
40:04her life but when jesse passed our friend group we all kind of went our own separate ways and lost
40:11touch and she really was the string that tied us all together
40:17i try to carry jesse with me everywhere i go i try to hold space for survivors and
40:25be a guide on their healing journey i wrote my college admissions essay about her and i got into uw milwaukee
40:32there's always this thing in the back of my mind that says her voice was taken away and i have a voice
40:40that i can use and i'm going to continue to use jesse learned the hard way on july 15th 2013
40:53we're not promised tomorrow tomorrow's a myth
41:05that's where they did the sacrifice
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