~A person could start on the 'Audio List' page first to get actual witness testimony and an overview. The Audio List page also has newer information, and audio recordings, that were not available when this page was written~
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmR07xhrZ72V6pT_mLFT9bOsVqg9rHzP6
Edited 'short' versions of the confession, 26 to 27 minutes
Other Youtube videos
Prehistory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JAwKHwiwVY
Initial Charging document a week after the murder has warning signs of a developing coverup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cdDACzouAE
Some background on the real killer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bIvjGmgpw
The Miranda Warning Esar Met received https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es3ttgtkFE4
Burmese language part of first 10 minutes of false confession https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzceaBqkhqE
Burmese language part of second 10 minutes of false confession https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEiRahvFqmk
Burmese language part of third 10 minutes of false confession https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuIWxzBiiUw
Last part of false confession interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbX_2ZmV8pk
Possibly related DNA malfeasance in Chanel Lewis case https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkhJeJ0X3cU
~
At the bottom are earlier versions of this page.
~
On March 31, 2008 a young Burmese girl went missing in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
About 30 hours later her body was found in a home occupied by four people from her ethnic group and one person from another group.
While the police were searching, the only apartment where occupants did not answer the door was the apartment where the four roommates were, and which the person from another group had left at least 30 hours earlier to visit others in another part of that town, or a suburb.
Within hours of finding the body police announced they had arrested a suspect and that he had confessed.
The FBI and police gave a lot of inaccurate information to the public, and Utah media cooperated in helping make sure the public did not learn the truth about evidence problems.
~
Most important issues
1) Forensics investigators quickly learned that several blood stains contained DNA from 'roommate #1' mixed with the victim's DNA. There were no samples anywhere in the crime scene that contained the DNA of the person who is in prison for the crime.
2) A high level decision was made to change reporting standards for DNA to make it possible to say 'no conclusion can be drawn' from the stains with the roommate's DNA.
Audio
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1534.mp3
https://tribalcash.org/images/mp3/clip1535.mp3
See item #2 on the "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" page for more details.
3) The prosecutor then led the public to believe only one sample contained the roommate's DNA, and the prosecutor suggested this was from him chewing 'betel nut' and spitting it on the wall in the spot where one blood stain was found.
4) The Medical Examiner gave misleading and untruthful testimony regarding injuries to the head, and the time of death. This false testimony was solicited by the prosecutor who wove a careful fiction out of it.
There are several dozen other big issues with the case, almost all documented with audio or scans, on various pages, on this website.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Earlier versions of this page
Written when less material was available.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Esar Met has been incarcerated in Utah since 2008 despite overwhelming evidence that prosecutors, judges, even his own defense lawyers, all worked together to make sure he would be convicted for a crime he did not commit.
He is still in prison today, with no legal options, despite overwhelming evidence he is not guilty.
A lot of the material on this page has been updated on other pages. Please look at the actual available evidence, including on the 'Hidden Evidence' pages, if you have any question. Many new audio recordings have been added. Ask any question at https://twitter.com/TribalCash
This case is peripherally related to long term political issues involving Burma / Myanmar and those issues are included where they are relevant to this case.
~
When the FBI and Utah police found that they had gotten a confession from an innocent person in a high profile Utah murder, an elaborate series of steps was taken to convince him to plead guilty.
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=51159255&itype=cmsid
When that failed, pressure was put on him to accept a bench trial, in which he could be convicted quickly without any public scrutiny of the evidence.
That didn't quite work either.
Finally in 2014, 6 years after his arrest, Esar Met went to trial, and was convicted of murdering Hser Ner Moo in a South Salt Lake City Utah trial.
There are lots of problems with this case, including substantial police misconduct, but this website focuses mainly on the obvious flaws in the prosecution which led a Burmese refugee to be convicted, by a Utah jury, for a crime he did not commit.
~
False confessions are common in many countries, including the United States.
In 2006, two years before the murder of 7 year old Hser Ner Moo, 3 year old Riley Fox was murdered.
"Her father, Kevin, confessed following a long night with Will County detectives."
"The state's attorney, a heavyset man named Jeffery Tomczak, swept into the room, shaking hands and nodding toward a line of police officers who stood stone-faced and imposing near a cadre of assistant prosecutors arrayed around the prosecution table. After the bailiff called the court to order, Tomczak laid out what he called cold, hard evidence of the father's guilt, including a confession. "He admitted duct-taping the child's mouth. He admitted placing her on the bank of the river, under the water. He admitted placing his finger in the vagina of the child. . . . He then went home and slept," the prosecutor said.
Tomczak added other details: The girl had been placed in the water while she was still "alive and moving and kicking." As if the image wasn't terrible enough, he said, she had been "able to remove the duct tape from her wrists prior to succumbing to drowning in the water."
At one point an assistant interrupted the presentation by bursting into the courtroom and thrusting a document into Tomczak's hand. "I've just been handed our certificate of intent to seek the death penalty in this case," the prosecutor declared. "I'm asking leave to file same." Tomczak wrapped up the hearing by asking for a $25-million bond, a request that drew gasps from the gallery."
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/july-2006/the-nightmare/
The child's father spent 5 months in jail before he was exonerated by dna.
https://www.injusticeanywhere.net/exonerated-kevin-fox/
Now, many years later, more details are emerging.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/fbis-hunt-riley-foxs-killer-revealed-major-mistakes/story?id=77505898
~
Many tribes in Asia live under constant attack from more powerful tribes and melting pots.
The area from Eastern India through Burma to Thailand has been a hotbed of wars against indigenous peoples for a long time. The victim of the murder discussed on this page is a member of the 'Karen' ethnic group which has no secure land, as with most indigenous groups in that area.
The person accused of killing her also belongs to a group which has no secure land.
The real killer is a member of the victim's ethnic group.
https://www.dw.com/en/myanmar-karen-rebels-seize-army-base-near-thai-border/a-57344994
~
Esar Met has been incarcerated in Utah for the past 13 years.
On March 30, 2008, One of the roommates of Esar Met took a photo of 7 year old Hser Ner Moo.
The next day she went missing, and the photo was put on a 'missing' flyer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUnAWOl47U8
April 2 2008 the FBI found Hser Ner Moo’s body, after a search filled with mistakes.
Hser was a young 'ethnic Karen’ Burmese refugee who had been brought to Utah by a local religious group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_people
Several hours later, in the early morning, the FBI and police announced they had a suspect, and he had confessed. He was referred to by some media as a Rohingya, but it is not entirely clear if he is actually from that group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people
Over the next few weeks, it became apparent to investigators that they had arrested the wrong person, and coaxed an elaborate confession from him which had no resemblance to the facts of the actual murder.
They held the person who they had mistakenly pressured into a confession six years in a Utah jail while they desperately fabricated a case against him.
He is still sitting in prison as of late 2021.
~
Because a similar murder had occurred two years before less than a mile away, police would have been in hot water if it turned out the girl was still alive when they declared that the apartment was unoccupied.
Was Hser Ner Moo still alive in the early morning of the second day of the search?
Evidence indicates that she probably was.
Who was in the apartment with her, or her body, and refused to respond to loud pounding on the door by police?
The four roommates.
~ If you have doubts, questions or want documentation for any claims on this page, ask at https://mobile.twitter.com/TribalCash
~
Quick summary of a few flaws in the prosecution of Esar Met for anybody who doesn’t want to read the whole page.
Many additional issues are covered in more detail on other pages.
1) During the 'confession', Esar Met did not know any information that was not fed to him by the FBI agent. 
The FBI agent kept giving him details and then telling him to fix the confession so the details matched the evidence, but Esar Met kept making mistakes which the FBI agent had to help him fix.
He never got a significant detail of the crime right. The one small detail he did sort of get right is in the image to the right, after the FBI agent said “No, no, no” to his first answer. Full transcript to show context is at https://pastebin.com/qZcK69HH
The Burmese person doing that translation refers to him as 'Samar' which is one phonetic variation of his name.
2) The fingernail DNA results returned from the lab after the crime did not contain Esar Met's DNA. The actual lab results are available online. https://twitter.com/TribalCash/status/1331760109618294784 There is much more to the DNA misconduct, involving Sorenson Forensics and a handful of people trying to make money using that company.
3) A Utah police officer lied under oath about the way he was notified that the body was found. According to his own reports, and according to the FBI agents who found the body, blood stains were first found downstairs. He received a phone call to that effect from an FBI agent. Under oath, during the trial, he changed that in such a way that it would support the inaccurate confession, which had blood on the stairwell. The blood on the stairwell did not appear until after the confession.
4) Esar Met did not 'flee the crime scene'. He left early that morning to visit family. He knew the police wanted to talk to him and had given the address and said he would wait, which he did.
The police who arrested him tried to pretend they were on some kind of dangerous manhunt. They assembled literally dozens of heavily armed cops and kicked down his door. Then they told the media he had tried to flee, which was untrue. On the witness stand one of the cops involved tried to give a heroic account of how the police took Esar Met into custody, but it was all nonsense.
His uncle had asked him to buy something and bring it over, so he did. He had not seen those family members since he left the refugee camp, and his aunt asked him to stay overnight, so he did.
Interestingly, one of the officers who appears to have falsified details in a police report about the arrest, which involved dozens of officers, has now been assigned to work in that area where he evidently helped cover up misconduct by his buddies.
https://www.cottonwoodheightsjournal.com/2015/11/05/91852/four-new-faces-for-cottonwood-heights
5) There are various strong indications that the girl was still alive many hours after Esar Met left. There was obvious pressure on witnesses to not contradict the prosecutor, but the simple truth is that the girl was probably alive well into the evening and possibly until the morning. Evidence for this includes the rigor mortis timeline, the evidence around the body, the testimony by the medical examiner about head injuries, the photo showing what appears to be two kicks, etc.
6) Esar Met was interviewed by a South Salt Lake City detective and an FBI agent. The person who was translating was a friend of some of the roommates, and shows a clear desire to help get a confession. The actions of the FBI agent and detective during the interview can only be called disgraceful. They repeatedly ignored evidence that he was not guilty, and carefully used Reid Technique methods to deliberately elicit a false confession. The FBI agent particularly was aware that Esar Met knew nothing about the crime, again and again he inserted crime scene details into his questions that Esar Met did not know, always aware that the interview was being recorded and he had to do it conversationally.
7) Esar Met was held 6 years waiting for a trial because so many people within the Utah legal system knew the evidence was not what the public had been led to believe.
He was not held because 'they couldn't find a court certified translator' nor because of 'language issues' or other excuses the prosecutor used. None of the initial evidence used in the charging document was accurate. And several months after the arrest they learned DNA implicated one of the roommates. A lot of people in Utah knew, and know, that there were serious problems with the case.
8) When he spoke up in court, in his language, and said the confession had been coerced, his own attorney, incredibly, reacted by asking the judge for more time to get a guilty plea. The attorney suggested that whatever Esar Met had yelled in court could be resolved and he could still get him to plead guilty.
Esar Met's 'outburst' was not translated in open court, so the judge and defense lawyer were not worried about public scrutiny.
https://www.ksl.com/article/10868411/outburst-halts-hearing-for-man-accused-of-girls-murder
Later the official translator told media that he had yelled that he was not guilty. The judge responded to his claim of innocence by saying he should no longer be brought to the hearings, and she gave the defense lawyer more time to quietly get a guilty plea.
9) One of the worst aspects of the case involves the suppression of the 'confession' interview.
Both the prosecution and the defense collaborated to suppress, or keep secret, the video of the confession. They knew it would cause local problems if the police and FBI had to admit they got a confession from a person who was not guilty.
The prosecution and the defense, along with a judge, made a clever maneuver that prevented anybody from using the interview at trial. The specific ruse that it could not be used 'except to impeach his testimony if he testified' is both ridiculous and transparent.
A Reid Technique interview, by a suspect claiming innocence of a crime, and which shows ignorance of the details of the crime, would obviously not 'impeach' his claims, it would support them.
To this day, not one lawyer in Utah has gone on the record to criticize the blatant collusion between defense and prosecution with regard to hiding the interview.
Anybody who glances at news articles about confessions and guilty pleas in Utah will notice a pattern that explains why authorities do not want scrutiny.
There are many more problems with this case, those are just a few of the obvious issues.
After the confession video was made public, a lawyer in Utah tried to 'clean up' the image of the case by filing an appeal. Despite dozens of substantive issues raised online about the case, the appeal lawyer limited the appeal to trivial issues that did not touch on the issue of guilt, and did not address any misconduct issues.
~~~~~~~
Below is the first version of this page, an overview of some broader details.
~~~~~~~
This page discusses several murders that took place in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
Although questions are raised about several of the cases, the only person who is clearly not guilty of the murder he was convicted of on this page is probably Esar Met.
Summary of some important questions in the case, https://mobile.twitter.com/TribalCash/status/1258244202330066946
~
A person accused of certain crimes, in any country, is easily convicted.
In the United States the crimes that require the least evidence to convict, and which are almost impossible to appeal after conviction, are child rape or murder, and terrorism.
Once you have been accused by a respected authority, you are almost certain to be convicted, and once convicted very few people are interested in re examining the evidence.
Unfortunately, these are also crimes that authorities tend to 'cheat' on with evidence.
~
Small girls of the same age have been kidnapped and killed in the Salt Lake City area every few years.
1995 Rosie Tapia, grabbed from her bed at night, dumped in a canal.
The crime appears to have been unsolved due to lack of police interest at the time.
At this point it looks like this case may be solved shortly.
1700 West and 1700 South, Salt Lake City, Utah
Unsolved
~
2006 Destiny Norton
700 South and 500 East, Salt Lake City, Utah
'Confession' that has significant features of a coerced or false confession, followed by a guilty plea. The confession was hidden from the public, but the little that is available was clearly not written by the person confessing. He may well be guilty, but people should wonder why the FBI felt it was necessary to lie about the confession and various other aspects of the case. https://www.ksl.com/article/697287/gregerson-pleads-guilty-to-killing-destiny-norton
~
2008 Hser Ner Moo
2248 S 440 E, Salt Lake City, Utah
Accused 'confesses' during a Reid Technique interview, but says he is not guilty. The interview shows he has no knowledge of the crime, but the confession is mysteriously suppressed with the cooperation of the accused's own defense lawyer, the same person who represented the person who confessed to killing Destiny Norton. At trial he is convicted on evidence that is discussed below. https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=18406380&itype=storyID
~
2012 Sierra Newbold is grabbed from her bed at night, dumped in a canal.
2300 W and 7905 S., West Jordan, Utah, a Salt Lake City suburb
Accused agrees to plead guilty but suggests he is not guilty. The 'cracking' of the case by the police is sold to the public as having a divine element, supernatural intervention.. https://fox13now.com/2018/10/11/the-man-accused-of-killing-6-year-old-sierra-newbold-is-found-competent-strikes-plea-deal/
There is video of the abduction that has not been made public.
Notice the statement about DNA in the charging document https ://localtvkstu.files.wordpress. com/2012/07/newbolddocs2. pdf /item removed / broken link / which says that DNA from the girl was found on Black, compared to
"Later, forensics tests were conducted and prosecutors say Black's DNA matched DNA found on Sierra's body."
https://www.ksl.com/article/21194209/neighbor-arrested-in-murder-of-6-year-old-sierra-newbold which suggests his DNA was found on the girl, which is not accurate.
In other words the police portrayed the evidence as different than it actually was, to make the case appear stronger. That should raise doubts about the initial evidence which they felt 'needed strengthening'.
~
2014 Anonymous 5 year old girl is grabbed from her bed at night. Kidnapping is spotted as it happens and kidnapper is caught.
10600 S. Rembrandt Lane (90 East), West Jordan, Utah, a Salt Lake City suburb
The kidnapper is variously portrayed as an engineer or a truck driver. He has no criminal history and receives a lenient sentence. The similarity to the Sierra Newbold kidnapping is unusual.
~
Here is another murder that might or might not be related.
Anna Palmer was 10 years old when she was killed in Salt Lake City in 1998.
There were no suspects, but in late 2008 somebody posted this.
Then, in 2010 the murder was 'solved', after the same DNA expert who found Hser Ner Moo's DNA under Esar Met's fingernails found DNA in the fingernails in this case.
https://www.ksl.com/article/15988282/dna-links-man-to-98-killing-of-young-girl-experts-testify
https://www.deseret.com/2011/8/12/20386440/mother-of-murdered-10-year-old-finally-feels-some-peace
https://justice4caylee.forumotion.net/t7524-anna-palmer-10-yo-1998-salt-lake-city-ut
This person could well be guilty, the main thing making it suspicious is simply that it was a child killing investigated by a certain group which has a strong track record of manipulating evidence improperly.
~
Destiny Norton and Hser Ner Moo were two small children killed within a mile of each other in Salt Lake City, less than two years apart.
Both cases were solved quickly, and secretly, by the FBI and local authorities.
Both defendants confessed in secret and were pressured to quickly plead guilty by the same defense attorney.
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=18406380&itype=storyID
In both cases evidence was hidden from the public and apparently 'lost', and witnesses told the media things that contradicted the police and FBI, resulting in gag orders that prevented the media from talking to witnesses.
https://www.deseret.com/2006/8/15/19968642/gag-order-on-gregerson-tightened
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=55243318&itype=CMSID
Gregerson confessed supposedly to an FBI lie detector technician. The technician had videotaped his previous interviews that day but did not turn on the video for the Gregerson interview. He described the interview though, in a highly problematic book.
An effort was made to keep Esar Met's confession video secret. Both the defense and prosecution took steps to make sure the jury could not view it.
It is available now.
Also transcripts.
~
Amnesty International calls the Rohingya "one of the most persecuted minorities on earth". Rohingya are Burmese Muslims of Indian descent. https://www.amnesty.org.au/who-are-the-rohingya-refugees/
Esar Met is a Burmese Muslim refugee arrested in 2008 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a young Utah girl in 2008, then held for 6 years, tried and convicted in 2014 and sentenced to life without parole. It isn't clear if he is Rohingya or a different kind of Burmese Muslim.
~
There is enough evidence pointing to the real killers, but federal and state authorities refuse to review his case credibly. 
Are the FBI and police simply covering up corruption and mistakes?
Or something much worse?
~
Hser Ner Moo, the victim, was a first grader in Salt Lake City, the child of recent Burmese immigrants. She was ethnic Karen. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_people
Esar Met, the accused, was the only person in the apartment who was not ethnic Karen.
~
The DNA results used at Esar Met's trial are not the same results returned from the lab.
The victim was clutching a handful of hair from the killer when her body was found. The hair was yanked out and had roots.
Why did that hair disappear from FBI custody?
https://www.whistleblowersblog.org/... 
https://news .yahoo. com/...https://web.archive.org/web/20191005194951/https://news.yahoo.com/why-scientist-keeps-receiving-packages-121005985.html
~In progress~
FAQS
The body was found in his shower, doesn't that prove he was guilty?
The place where the body was found was accessible to anybody in the house. There was an open stairway, with no door, between the upstairs and downstairs. In fact even the front door to the apartment was usually left unlocked.
He had scratches that an expert said could have come from a child. Doesn't that prove he's guilty.
His scratches came from scratching and from getting beaten and dragged by police. His apartment was infested with bedbugs and he had been in a place where even more bugs were just four weeks earlier. On the fourth video of the interview you can see him scratch casually.
He was also bruised from what was called 'a rough takedown'. At trial one of the officers involved admitted that force was used even though Esar Met was not resisting. Part of the problem was that he did not speak English and did not understand their commands.
There was DNA evidence. Doesn't that prove he's guilty?
The DNA presented at trial was different than the DNA returned by the lab, one of many problems with supposed 'forensics' in this case.
What about the hair the victim pulled from from the attacker? Doesn't that prove he's guilty?
An interesting aspect of the 'clutched hair' is that it was never mentioned to the media by the FBI, police or prosecutors after Esar Met 'confessed'. A quick look at the most likely suspect shows he had much longer hair than Esar Met on the day of the crime. He was also wearing a pullover cap on his head when the FBI arrived, and kept the cap on during the interrogation, in fact even wore it when he was photographed by police.
This is one more of several indications that FBI and police investigators knew from the very beginning that they had arrested the wrong person.
What about the blood on the back of his jacket? Doesn't that prove he's guilty?
All of the fresh blood on his clothing was tested shortly after he was arrested and it was all his own blood.
The stains on the back of his jacket, aside from being extremely inconsistent with the crime, appear to have been placed there later. They are not visible on video footage that shows the back of his jacket after the arrest.
It's possible too that they were simply old stains, and that is why they were not noticed at first. He used to give piggy back rides, or 'elephant rides' to other kids and Hser Ner Moo may have had a bloody nose in the weeks before she died, according to testimony. There is a big difference in the appearance of fairly fresh blood and blood that is more than a few days old.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_residue
The killer would have been covered in blood and would have needed to clean up. Esar Met owned only one jacket, and that jacket was not worn by the killer or it would have had blood in the front, on the sleeves etc. During the confession he 'confessed' that he got blood on the front of his t shirt, and even showed it to the FBI agent, but tests determined there was no blood where he "confessed" there was, nor anywhere else, aside from what a technician claimed to have found on the back of his jacket.
Also, there was simply not enough time for him to have committed the murder even without cleaning up. If you look at the bus schedules, and his testimony, and look at when he arrived, it's clear that he was telling the truth when he said he left around 12:30 and the two girls left at the same time. A neighbor separately mentioned that to a reporter, and that was probably one of several reasons the judge put a gag order on the case. A lot of comments made to media right after the killing contradict the state's case.
“Than Hti Ke, a neighbor, said Esar Met stopped by to watch television at his apartment about 1 p.m. Monday, shortly before the girl disappeared.”
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=8765468&itype=NGPSID
But the FBI and police said he confessed. Doesn't that prove he's guilty?
The confession he supposedly gave was kept secret by the FBI, police and prosecutors for a reason. Once the confession was available to the public, and could be examined, it was clear that it was consistent with a false confession and inconsistent with a factual confession.
The confession video hidden from the jury, as well as transcripts, also kept from the jury, are available now.
Confession, suppressed and hidden from the jury https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCE47ZdFtZFD_dJ-ROvsZhHg
Appeal document https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ut-supreme-court/1755558.html
Confession translation 1 https://pastebin.com/rQHFW5rq
Confession translation 2 https://pastebin.com/qZcK69HH
~
~in progress~
An excellent paper with dozens of anecdotal stories about false convictions can be found at https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/exonerations_us_1989_2012_full_report.pdf
One example, with parallels to the Esar Met case.
"In February 1983, 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico was abducted from her home in Naperville, Illinois, raped, and killed – a crime of stunning brutality. The murder was the subject of a long, frustrating, unsuccessful investigation – a humiliating public failure. Thirteen months after the murder and less than two weeks before the local prosecutor stood for re-election, three men were indicted: Rolando Cruz, Alejandro Hernandez, and Stephen Buckley. Cruz and Hernandez were convicted and sentenced to death; their convictions were reversed by the Illinois Supreme Court. They were convicted again, but this time only Cruz was sentenced to death. Again the convictions were reversed. Finally, at Cruz’s third trial, 12 years after the murder, the case fell apart when a high-ranking police official admitted that Cruz never made a statement about the murders that the prosecution presented at both trials as tantamount to a confession. The judge entered a judgment of acquittal. DNA testing later linked the crime to a serial sex killer who had confessed to the Nicarico murder years before."
"What seems to have happened is this: Under intense pressure, the police convinced themselves that they knew who killed Jeanine Nicarico and they manufactured evidence to convince prosecutors and for use in court."
~
Article from 2016 about a similar case https://thefreethoughtproject.com/murder-conviction-chris-tapp/
Same case, article from 2019 https://news.yahoo.com/90s-christopher-tapp-convicted-rape-murder-today-hes-155437000--abc-news-topstories.html
In that case, like the Esar Met case, there were important political factors influencing the courts. A top member of the prosecution became mayor of the town after the conviction. Once enough evidence was found indicating the convicted person was not guilty, the main focus of authorities was avoiding accountability for themselves. They had him admit guilt in exchange for freedom as long as he agreed to drop all the legal challenges. So despite an abundance of evidence of misconduct by police and prosecutors, those officials carefully arranged things so they would not face any accountability.
Some more articles on that case.
https://www .localnews8. com/news/kifi-top-story/timeline-of-christopher-tapp-murder-case-and-appeals/208984291https://web.archive.org/web/20190517030925/https://www.localnews8.com/news/kifi-top-story/timeline-of-christopher-tapp-murder-case-and-appeals/208984291
When he was falsely accused by police and convicted he was a young man with no criminal record and no indication that he would become a problem. After 20 years in prison, obviously, his personality changed. https://www.eastidahonews.com/2017/10/watch-chris-tapp-pleads-not-guilty-domestic-battery-charge/
Note that in that case, after he was released but before he was fully exonerated, the police and prosecutors appear to be abusing their control of the media and of the 'public narrative' to portray him as possibly guilty of the first crime, murder, when they knew he was not. Their goal was obviously simply to make themselves look good with no regard whatsoever for the truth nor for their victims.
There is one important difference between the two cases.
In the case involving the recent exoneration, one of the most important influencers was the mother of the victim. She recognized that the police arrested the wrong person and she saw to it that there was some accountability for the actual killer.
In the Esar Met case the police terrorized the victim's family into silence using their "official" powers.
When members of that community raised doubts a gag order was issued.
When an investigator tried to fabricate evidence that supported the prosecutor's case the public was prevented from hearing facts.
The Burmese victim's family, as well as most of the people involved, were familiar with the danger authorities sometimes pose, and were easily silenced. One of the most shameful aspects of the Esar Met case was the mother of the victim feeling so threatened by authorities that she felt compelled to say "god bless america" after the trial. The fact that even the media ignored the real sentiment behind her comment says a lot as well.
~
https://www.kold.com/2018/09/15/man-indicted-deaths-isabel-celis-maribel-gonzales/
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=5349969&itype=CMSID
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=1796819&itype=CMSID
One example of an inaccurate article.
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=9115938&itype=NGPSID
"Dozens of photographs showing injuries covering murder suspect Esar Met's body the day after his arrest as a suspect in the slaying of 7-year-old neighbor Hser Ner Moo are among the evidence gathered to build a case against the 21-year-old Burmese refugee. The injuries could be the result of second-grader Hser Ner Moo's efforts to fight off her attacker, according to the search warrants made public in 3rd District Court this week."
"The nearly 100 pages of search warrants detail evidence seized that connects Esar Met to the girl's murder inside his South Salt Lake apartment last month. Photographs ordered of the suspect's skin reveal abrasions on his shoulder, chest, back and legs, according to the search warrants. The man had redness around his navel and a circular abrasion on his hip, the documents state."
There was testimony at trial that his arrest was 'rough' and caused some abrasions. The child had pulled a handful of hair from the head of the killer. Mr Met was not missing a handful of hair. One of the roommates was.
"FBI agents found the body of Hser Ner Moo in Esar Met's basement shower on April 1. She was found beaten, raped and strangled a day after she walked away from her home at South Parc Townhomes, 2250 S. 500 East, in South Salt Lake. The girl's autopsy revealed she was clutching hair in her right hand that resembled that of Esar Met's. The girl was beaten about the head, neck and torso with some injuries consistent with strangulation or suffocation, according to court documents."
Why did the FBI 'lose' that hair?
"Esar Met's blood was on the floor of a room adjacent to the shower and spattered on one wall, according to the charging documents. He is charged with aggravated murder and kidnapping."
This article came out before the blood was tested. Actually the only dna in the room or walls came from one of the roommates, an unidentifiable male, and the victim. There was no dna, neither blood dna nor skin dna nor any other kind of dna from Esar Met found. The prosecution then claimed that Hser Ner Moo had Esar Met's dna under her fingernails, but the actual lab results, from the dna lab, contradict the prosecutor.
"Police recovered several items belonging to Hser Ner Moo in Esar Met's apartment, including the girl's pink shoes, a plastic red ribbon and the child's underwear, the search warrants state."
There were five people living in the apartment. It is misleading to refer to it as 'his' apartment. The other roommates stored bicycles, dvd's and other things in Esar Met's downstairs living area and had free access to it. There was no door, much less any locked door, that kept his living area separate from the common area.
"Police also seized a ring from Esar Met that could be the object responsible for a laceration found above Hser Ner Moo's left eyebrow, according to the documents. The girl's autopsy states the eye injury is consistent with a blunt force injury - possibly by being hit by someone wearing a ring."
The ring did not match any injuries and was not mentioned at trial.
"A bus pass found on the man when he was arrested at his aunt's Cottonwood Heights apartment on April 1 could show specific times Esar Met left and arrived at his South Salt Lake apartment the day of Hser Ner Moo's murder, according to the search warrants. A Social Security card and notebook were other items with the man at his arrest. Esar Met is being held in the Salt Lake County jail. The murder charge against him is punishable by death, but prosecutors have said they will wait until after a four-day preliminary hearing scheduled for Dec. 9 before deciding whether to pursue the death penalty."
The bus schedule is among the many pieces of evidence that point to the guilt of somebody else.
~In Progress
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Big_(police_procedure)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confession_Tapes
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=1796167&itype=CMSID
https://www.foxnews.com/us/lawyer-drugs-not-mental-health-could-be-issue-in-foiled-kidnapping-case
A list of some of the evidence FBI and police investigators fabricated while investigating the murder of Hser Ner Moo.
1 DNA
Actual results say 'inconclusive'.
2 Confession
The actual confession was suppressed and hidden from jurors and the public because it shows he knew nothing about the crime. The public was simply told 'he confessed' rather than 'he was carefully and deliberately walked into a false confession'.
3 Blood on the handrail.
This testimony was meant to calm some people who were aware of problems in the confession. If it were true then it would make one small part of the confession possibly true. But an examination of the police report, as well as testimony at the trial by an FBI agent, make it clear this testimony was not factual.
4 Supposed fleeing the crime scene.
At least three witnesses can corroborate that the visit to the uncle's house was planned, but those witnesses were prevented from testifying to that.
5 Supposed fleeing from uncle's house.
Police told the public that when they arrived at the uncle's house Esar Met tried to run away. They later admitted they had not been truthful about that. In fact Esar Met spoke on the phone with them before the police arrived, and asked his aunt to give them the address.
There are many more examples, ranging from the hair evidence to the bus timeline to the mysterious locked door, anybody who is curious can research or ask questions.
Update.
A new testing process can easily prove that Esar Met was not the killer of Hser Ner Moo.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/scientists-can-now-identify-someone-single-strand-hair#
But there is a problem, even aside from the FBI's refusal to produce the hair.
In the initial prosecution, the FBI and local police falsified a vast amount of evidence.
Two hairs samples were taken as evidence from the body.
One of them was the killer's hair, which Hser Ner Moo was clutching in her hand. The other was a hair on her abdomen.
She was laying on her stomach in Esar Met's shower, so the hair on her abdomen could well have come from Esar Met.
Previous chicanery by the FBI and Salt Lake police suggests that they would try to pass off the hair found on the victim's abdomen as the hair that was being clutched.
There would have been photos taken of both hairs though, and it's very likely the clutched hair is quite a bit longer than the hair found on the victim's abdomen.
It remains to be seen if the FBI and local police will be forced to test the clutched hair, but if that is managed it would be wise to have some non U.S. law enforcement personnel in charge of handling the hairs, comparing them to photos and testing them. There are plenty of nonprofit orgs and refugee groups that have enough credibility to conduct the test.
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Another Salt Lake City case that is unusual. In this case there is no clear forensic evidence that the accused is not guilty, as there is in the Esar Met case, but the tone of the investigation shows how evidence was viewed.
Look first at the appeal document. That supposedly should present evidence in a fair and truthful way. Instead it omits the entire defense viewpoint which is included in the CBS link.
There are many of the same problems in both cases, obviously including a lack of understanding of psychology by investigators.
One example is the shoe print. The accused was not likely to have 'staged' a suicide, but if he did he would have been unlikely to have hidden his use of specific footwear. The fact that a) numerous people were excluded based on the footprints and b) the footprints were not used to link his footwear to the crime, points to the prosecution bending evidence to suit their objective.
https://law.justia.com/cases/utah/court-of-appeals-published/2019/20151017-ca.html
https://www.ksl.com/article/33811735/former-doctors-own-words-convicted-him-of-murder-jurors-say
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/48-hours-father-and-son-uta-von-schwedler-death-investigation/
~
Added to the bottom of this page will be relevant news articles.
Rare earths, also called strategic metals, are a long ignored commodity that underpins the future development of all industrial countries.
The FBI helped arrange the conviction of Esar Met for various reasons.
These facts or reasons do not involve anybody in the U.S. government actually helping U.S. interests, despite what they may suggest. It is entirely an example of a small mafia within the highest level of government acting to benefit themselves.
One factor involves increased influence various U.S. agencies got with members of the Karen ethnic community who had previously lived on the Burmese / Thai border. This influence came through increased leverage, in the form of material that those ethnic Karen individuals did not want to be made public. The 'missing time line' elements, alluded to down this page, grew into altered testimony at trial, involving when the roommates returned to the apartment. All of the information involved is public and findable by anybody.
1) From Afghanistan to Burma
"A 'shadow government' named by the opposition was angered by a Chinese Embassy statement that referred to junta head Min Aung Hlaing as "leader" of Myanmar."
2)
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Very rarely, in the United States, a prosecutor who tries not to favor his or her own colleagues will be appointed or elected. When that happens they invariably have a lot of past cases to deal with.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/31/us/curtis-crosland-philadelphia-murder-exoneration/index.html
Salt Lake City is on the other side of that equation. Unless a person has a vast amount of money and/or extraordinary connections, evidence is irrelevant.
~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%B0mundur_and_Geirfinnur_case
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A lot of states have had problems with forensics labs.
Prior to 2011 there had been no major concerns about forensics laboratories in Massachusetts. Most of the drug samples in legal cases in Massachusetts were sent to two labs.
Suddenly it was discovered that a vast number of tests may have been falsified by two employees working separately at those two labs.
Tens of thousands of convictions were tossed out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Dookhan
https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/who-is-sonja-farak-from-netflixs-how-to-fix-a-drug-scandal
In 2020 more evidence emerged that the two people caught were not the only ones in that state falsifying evidence at the time of the scandal.
https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/07/17/massachusetts-drug-lab-testing-scandal-new-developments
In the United States it is generally not a crime for a prosecutor to deliberately send an innocent person to prison.
"prosecutors enjoy broad immunity for their official actions, even “for the knowing suppression of exculpatory information,” the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled"
When it became clear that there was a major problem with forensic testing in Massachusetts, the first thing the Attorney General of that state did was try to cover up the misconduct.
One of the problems was that law enforcers had been involved in soliciting false information from the lab.
Something even worse appears to have happened in the Esar Met prosecution.
At least two high level employees of a specific lab in Utah, two people who were in Utah at the time but are not now there, along with at least one other high level employee who is still in Utah, have a long history of trying to use their scientific credentials to pal around with crooked law enforcers to make extra money.
But there is one important difference between the Massachusetts forensics labs, in those thousands of drug cases, and the Utah lab that tested evidence for the case discussed on this page.
There was very little evidence of misconduct at the Massachusetts labs prior to misconduct being discovered, but that is not the case with the Utah lab.
The lab which 'found' DNA evidence in the Esar Met case and misrepresented what was found in order to help prosecutors, has been caught several times in scandals which have been largely covered up. Some of those cases are linked on other pages.
This article
mentions two examples, but several others are referenced online with the original links being unavailable.
There is no doubt that the owners of that lab at the time had significant political connections, both in Utah and in other states, which helped them avoid accountability.
DNA lab misconduct is not the only widely tolerated problem in the U.S. legal system.
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