FBI Agent’s Son Murdered 13-Year-Old, Then Died in Jail

0:00Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at McDonald's. I want you to imagine buying a getaway car for a murder using drug money. Right. And then deciding the absolute best place to pull off this completely untraceable transaction is under your real name on Facebook Marketplace. It's just, it's almost hard to believe. It really is. Today, we're doing a deep dive into a case where the collision of street level violence and just, well, absolute digital incompetence led detective straight to the son of an FBI agent. Yeah, it's a fascinating breakdown of how these investigations actually work. So we are unpacking the anatomy of this tragic drive-by shooting in Albuquerque from August 2024. And I mean, setting the scene here, it's just devastating.

1:00We have a 13 year old boy, Michael Tubb, who is writing passenger, a 17 year old girl is driving. And out of nowhere, just a barrageable it tears through their car. The driver, she survives her injuries, but tragically, Michael dies at the scene. And the police, they are left staring at a completely blank slate. Which is the hardest place to start from. Exactly. Like, there's no immediate motive, no known enemies of these kids. Just shattered glass and a ghost of a suspect. So how do you even begin to solve a crime when there's literally nothing to go on? Well, that kind of investigative void, it really forces law enforcement to abandon traditional motive-based profiling. Because when there's no disgruntled ex-business partner or obvious gang rivalry to interrogate, the psychology of the victims is completely irrelevant to the solution. Right, because usually you look at who would want to hurt them. Right? Exactly. But here, detectives have to pivot entirely to the mechanics of the event itself. And the only physical anchor they had

2:00in all this chaos was a vehicle description. A very specific one, right? A 2015 Lexus. Yes, a 2015 Lexus. And having that, it transforms the investigation from a classic who'd done it into, basically a supply chain analysis. You have to trace the life cycle of that specific machine through the local ecosystem. In that trace, that working backwards brings us to the Facebook Marketplace transaction in September, which was the month right after the shooting. Yeah, that's where things get really interesting. Right, because detectives pull a thread that leads them to 22-year-old Michael Flores. He buys the exact model of Lexus for $10,000. And I mean, he later openly admits in an interrogation that he paid for it using money he made dealing cocaine. Which is a crucial detail. It's wild. Let's unpack this for a second. We have a guy operating in the illicit narcotics trade, purchasing a vehicle that will be used in a homicide. And he's executing the transaction on a platform tie to his personal social matrix.

3:02Yeah, his actual Facebook profile. It's like trying to be a criminal mastermind, but using a town square bulletin board to hide your tracks. I mean, does this kind of digital clumsiness happen often? Oh, all the time. We see this cognitive dissonance constantly in modern criminal behavior. There is this bizarre compartmentalization at play. What do you mean by that? Well, in the street level drug trade, transactions are cash-based. They use burner phones. Everyone is highly paranoid, right? Right, very off the grid. Exactly. But when that illicit cash crosses over into a legitimate purchase, like buying a car online, the suspect's brain often just reverts to default consumer behavior. So he's not thinking like a criminal in that moment? Not at all. Flores wasn't thinking of Facebook Marketplace as an immutable digital ledger managed by Meta's server farms. He was just thinking of it as the classifies. Just a place to buy a car? Yeah, he completely failed to recognize that his profile is a node. It's connected to IP addresses, geolocation data,

4:04a whole web of known associates. But his brain definitely switches out of that default consumer mode once the heat is on. Because the police end up putting out a crime stoppers tip with pictures of this specific Lexus. Flores sees it and the digital panic sets in. And you know, detectives pull the search history from his phone later. And it's just a masterclass in reactionary stupidity. That's a good way to put it. I mean, he's furiously googling ways to modify the car's physical appearance. He's searching for new front grills, new rims. And then he tries to resell the car on Facebook Marketplace to get rid of it. But here is the maneuver he thinks is going to save him. Oh, yeah, this part is really telling. He intentionally lists the car as a 2014 model instead of a 2015. Like, he really thought changing one number on a drop down menu was going to throw the cops off his scent. Because he fundamentally misunderstood the adversarial nature of digital forensics, he operated under the assumption

5:04that police investigate the internet by like simply reading text fields on a screen, just like a regular user would. Right, like they're just scrolling through Facebook looking for a 2015 so they won't click on a 2014. Exactly. He thought changing a single digit in a user input field would act as some sort of invisibility cloak against a major homicide investigation. But digital forensics teams, they don't care what you type in the description box. They look way deeper than that. Oh, absolutely. They pull the ex of data from the photos you uploaded. They subpoena the platform for the device fingerprint that created the listing. Wow. And that ties back to the MAC address of the phone, which links to the billing records of the cellular provider. I mean, the digital architecture underneath the listing is completely indifferent to his little attempt at deception. So Flores thinks changing one digit on a web form makes them a ghost. But that single digital error doesn't just put them on a suspect list, right? It acts as a homing beacon. It leads them right to his front door. Exactly. And the physical consequence of that digital ping

6:05manifests at 9.30 in the morning on October 3rd, right in its front yard. The theoretical investigation instantly becomes this high-risk tactical reality. SWAT descends on 303 Pearl Drive Northeast. In that transition from digital tracking to tactical execution, it requires a complete shift in operational tempo for the police. I can imagine. Why 9.30 AM, though? The execution of a high-risk warrant at 9.30 AM is a very calculated choice. It's past the window of early morning school drop-offs and typical work commutes. Oh, so the streets are quieter. Right. Minimizing the presence of innocent bystanders in the immediate cross-fire zone. But it still catches the suspect in a period of presumed lower guard. Most people aren't expecting a raid mid-morning. That makes total sense. And if you listen to the body cam audio, it captures this auditory assault that's designed to paralyze the target's decision-making loop. It's overwhelming by design. The commands echoing over the PA system are brutally precise.

7:06It's like exit the front door with your hands up and empty. If you comply, we can guarantee your safety. If you do not comply, force will be used against you. And you have all the other sensory inputs, too. Yeah, you hear the police canines going absolutely wild in the background. Laser sites are just cutting through the house. And when they finally pull floors out and detain them, the first thing they ask is a very specific hazard question. The poke or stick question. Right. The demand to know if he has anything in his pockets or waistband they could poke or stick them during the pat-tout. Why is that the very first priority? Well, the poke or stick protocol is a critical piece of operational hygiene. When SWAT is taking down a suspect known to deal cocaine, the threat matrix isn't just limited to firearms. OK. The immediate physical danger to the arresting officer is often an uncapped hypodermic needle or concealed razor blade in a pocket. Oh, wow. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, a needle stick injury during a dynamic take down introduces the risk of bloodborne pathogens. And that can be career-ending or even life-altering

8:07for the officer. So they are neutralizing those micro-threats before they even begin to process the macro-threat of the homicide investigation. That is intense. So once he is in cuffs, floor is tells him there is no one else in the house, no dogs, no other people. It's just him. But the tactical communication between the officers continues. Right. Right, right, right. They don't just take his word for it. Not at all. Yeah. You hear officers confirming phrases like right technique for the job and locked open as they stack up and actually reenter the residence. It's like running a sweet protocol on a hard drive, right? You don't just quarantine the one virus you found. Exactly. You have to scan every single subfolder because a fragmented piece of the threat could be hiding anywhere. Right. Why do they have to clear the house? If the guy they want is already in handcuffs and saying it's empty. Because the suspect's word is completely inadmissible in the environment of a raid. Obviously, they can't trust him. Right. It operates under the assumption of a multi variable threat.

9:08The house remains a volatile, unsecure environment until every cubic foot is dominated. Dominated. That's a strong word. It has to be. There could be a co-conspirator heavily armed in a crawl space. There could be an individual actively destroying physical evidence like flushing narcotics or dismantling the murder weapon while the cops are outside. Or someone innocent, right? Catastrophically, yes. There could be innocent hostages or children present. So the systemic clearing of the structure is completely non-negotiable, regardless of the primary target's compliance. OK. So the house is cleared. Flores is sitting in a jail cell for weeks. The reality of a first-degree murder charge is just crushing him. And by December 4th, he breaks. He realizes he has to talk. He sits down for interrogation and he just shatters the entire framework of the investigation. He tells them he wasn't the trigger man. He was just the driver, which completely shifts the focus. It really does. He points the finger at the actual shooter, 21-year-old Thomas

10:09AC. And this is where the sociological fabric of this crime gets incredibly strange, because Thomas AC is the son of an FBI special agent, Brian AC. Yeah. The introduction of Thomas AC completely scrambles the established psychological profile of the crime. Totally. You have a street-level cocaine dealer, Flores. Essentially, acting as the chauffeur for a young man who is raised within the institutional walls of federal law enforcement. It's a very unusual pairing. The detectives naturally want to know how this alliance even formed. And Flores describes it as sort of a meat-cute of a crime. Right. He says they met through a friend of a friend downtown, while Flores was actively selling cocaine. They convened at a show-shoney address. But wait, let's look at the power dynamic here, because here's where it gets really interesting. Let's hear it. We have a cocaine dealer and the son of a federal agent riding around together in a car bought with drug money. And Flores tells detectives that AC brings his guns everywhere. He specifically knows that AC casually

11:09kept a firearm resting right by his feet on the floorboard of the passenger seat. Which is very telling behavior. I mean, how does the background in law enforcement impact a suspect's behavior? Does growing up in an FBI household breed a specific kind of perceived invincibility or is keeping a gun at your feet just standard street-level paranoia? Well, I'd argue it's less about paranoia and more about the assertion of territorial dominance. Dominance. Think about it. Paranoia dictates concealment, right? Keeping the weapon hidden but accessible because you genuinely fear an attack. Casually resting a firearm on the floorboard in plain sight, that is an aggressive posture. It's like a statement. Exactly. It communicates to everyone in the vehicle, including Flores, that AC controls the environment. And while we can't definitively trace this arrogance to his father's occupation, we do see patterns. Like what kind of patterns? Individuals who grow up in proximity to high-level law enforcement sometimes internalize this dangerous distortion of authority. They know the jargon. They understand the procedural constraints

12:11police operate under. So they think they know the game. Yeah. And they can develop a toxic belief that their pedigree insulates them from the consequences that apply to the criminal underclass. And when you have an individual aggressively posturing with a firearm at his feet, it turns every minor interaction into a powder keg, which brings us to the actual catalyst for this specific tragedy. Right, because it didn't start that night. No, it was actually rooted in an event months prior. Flores tells the police that earlier in the year, AC was at a party where he was robbed. In his car, which was a white Genesis, was shot up. So he's carrying this around with him? Exactly. AC is carrying this humiliation, this unresolved grievance around with him like a lit fuse. And that combination of a fragile ego, a perceived loss of status from the robbery and immediate access to lethal force, it is the exact formula for retaliatory violence. It's terrifying. He isn't just carrying a gun. He is carrying an active mandate to restore his pride.

13:14The absolute moment an opportunity presents itself. And that opportunity supposedly materializes downtown. They are walking back to Flores, Lexus. AC locks eyes on a guy. He instantly declares to Flores that this is the exact individual who robbed him and shot up his car months ago. Just spots him on the street. Right. He describes the guy to police later as a male, about 6'1 or 6'2 with an Edgar haircut. So AC and this man exchange words. Did Flores hear what they said? Flores claims he couldn't hear the dialogue, but he noted it wasn't a screaming match, it was quiet. But the second they get into the Lexus, the atmosphere in the car shifts violently. The coercion begins. Yeah. AC commands Flores to loop around. He wants to track the guy. And Flores says he wants no part of it. He literally says we're going home. So Flores attempts to reassert control over his own vehicle. Yeah, but it doesn't work. Because the power dynamic we just analyze instantly overrides his boundaries, AC's grievance has been activated.

14:16And in that moment, Flores is nothing more than the logistical mechanism to facilitate his revenge. So AC manipulates him into looping around just once. They spot the target car. Then AC escalates. He says, loop around again and follow that car. So now they're hunting. They are. But they end up tailing the wrong vehicle toward the University of New Mexico for like five to 10 minutes. When AC realizes the error, Flores begs to go home again. And at this point, the tension just breaks. AC snaps. He turns on Flores. He points his gun directly at Flores inside the tight confines of the car. He hurls derogatory insult to Adam, calls him a coward, and orders him to drive back downtown to resume the hunt. The introduction of the firearm directed at Flores fundamentally alters the legal and psychological landscape of the event. We are moving out of a conspiracy and into a complex hostage dynamic. It's insane. He's held at gunpoint in his own car. Right.

15:16Inside the cabin of a moving vehicle, Flores' central nervous system is thrust into an acute stress response. Fight, flight, or freeze. But he's trapped. Exactly. The option of flight is physically constrained by the moving car. The option of fighting means attempting to disarm and agitated, highly motivated individual, while simultaneously operating a motor vehicle. Which is almost impossible. But let's dig into the legal doctrine of duress here. Because so what does this all mean for Flores? He claims he's being held at gunpoint, effectively captive in his own driver's seat. Yes. Yet he physically turns the steering wheel. He presses the accelerator. He navigates back downtown. He is actively delivering the weapon to the target. At what point does self-preservation make you complicit in a crime? It's a really tough legal question. Because he wanted to go home, but his foot was still on the gas. Well, the legal defense of duress is incredibly unforgiving. How so? To successfully claim duress, a defendant must prove that the threat of death or serious bodily injury was immediate,

16:17continuous, and unavoidable. The law demands that you take every reasonable avenue of escape before participating in a felony. So they would ask why he didn't run? Exactly. Did Flores have an opportunity to crash the car into a parked vehicle to disable it? Did he have a moment at a stoplight to dive out the door? Well, so the law expects you to crash your own car rather than drive someone to a shooting. Pretty much. If a jury believes he had a window to terminate his involvement and chose to continue driving simply because it was the path of lease resistance, his duress defense evaporates. The prosecution will argue that his fear of AC did not absolve him of his duty to prevent a homicide. That is a very high bar. And unfortunately, the hunt succeeds. They spot the target car, parked just a block from where the initial confrontation happened. AC identifies the car, Flores tails it for about two minutes. This leads to the climax. Yeah. The target car is heavily tinted. Windows are rolled up tight. It is basically a black box. Flores decides he's going to execute a maneuver

17:19to end the nightmare. He plans to pass the car, get into the turning lane, and just drive away. He's made his choice. His internal monologue is literally, if he shoots me, he shoots me. I'm taking us home. So he pulls into the turning lane and executes a California role, a rolling stop just to check traffic. Right. His driver's side window is parallel to their passenger side window. The car is still carrying forward momentum. And in that fraction of a second, AC launches his entire body out of the front passenger seat. The biomechanics of exiting a moving vehicle while maintaining positive control of a firearm, it requires total aggressive commitment. He didn't even hesitate. No, it demonstrates that AC was operating on pure, unregulated adrenaline. There was no tactical assessment of the target environment. It was just an explosive release of kinetic energy directed entirely at a heavily tinted, unidentified threat. And it is a hurricane of violence in a one to two-second window.

18:19He unleashes roughly 20 rounds. He is firing from outside the passenger side of Flores' car, advancing toward the hood, shooting across the gap into the blackout windows. A spray and prey execution. Absolutely. He is firing with such erratic blind rage that one of the bullets grazes the roof and Flores' own car. It passes inches over Flores' headrest and shatters their sunroof. He almost executes his own driver and his friends eat a kill a shadow behind a tinted window. And that shattered sunroof. It destroys any potential narrative of a calculated, precise engagement. What do you mean? It proves that AC had completely lost his gross motor control and muzzle discipline. He was just pulling the trigger as fast as the mechanism would allow, completely indifferent to the trajectory of the rounds. The collateral danger wasn't just to the surrounding neighborhood. He was actively endangering his own tactical platform. I mean, Flores is sitting there. His ears are ringing from the conclusive force of 20 rounds fired inches from his head.

19:21He's covered in the shattered glass of his own sunroof. It's absolute chaos. But let's look at AC's excuse later. During a subsequent road trip to Colorado, AC claims to Flores that the only reason he started shooting was because he saw a gun inside the target car, which is very convenient. Right. Flores calls this out in the interrogation as an absolute fabrication. He states the tint was pitch black. The windows were up. It was physically impossible to see the interior. Exactly. So was claiming he saw a gun through pitch black tint just a way to rationalize a cold-blooded mistake to the only witness? Or was he testing out illegal defense? It is a profound example of post-incident rationalization fueled by cognitive dissonance. Break that down for us. When an individual commits an act of extreme unjustified violence, the human brain struggles to integrate that action with their self-concept. AC fired 20 rounds into a box. The realization that he may have just committed a completely unprovoked murder,

20:22it threatens his ego and his sanity. So he makes up a story to live with himself? Yes. To bridge that gap, the psyche manufactures a localized threat. I saw a gun. I was forced to act. It is a retroactive justification designed to neutralize his internal guilt. Even when the physical environment, the heavy tint, makes the narrative objectively impossible. And the reality behind that tint is the most devastating part of this entire analysis. AC was hunting a six-foot-one adult male who had supposedly wronged him months ago. Right. But because he couldn't see through the glass, he unleashed 20 rounds of vengeance into a 17-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy. The mistaken identity is absolute. He murdered a child because he fired blindly into a shadow. The tint acted as a fatal barrier to reality. It allowed AC's confirmation bias to completely overwrite the visual evidence. Confirmation bias. Yeah, he wanted his target to be in that car. So in his mind, the target was in that car.

21:24It is the horrific irreversible consequence of grievance-driven violence intersecting with heavy weaponry. It's just sickening. So the moment the gunfire stops, they flee the scene and we enter the cover-up face. The tactics AC uses to manage Flores following the shooting are straight out of an organized crime playbook. He tries to lock down the information. Yeah, he immediately institutes an information blackout. He coaches Flores to never speak of it, commanding him to avoid all digital communication. No texts, no encrypted apps, nothing. AC is leaning heavily on his proximate to federal law enforcement here. He understands the architecture of a conspiracy charge. Because of his dad. Likely, yes. He knows that prosecutors build their cases on the metadata of communication. He is attempting to starve the investigative apparatus by creating an absolute void of digital evidence between the co-conspirators. But then the news drops. The local media reports the death of 13-year-old Michael Tub and AC's psychological armor cracks.

22:26He panics and tells Flores, I didn't know I killed that kid. The bravado vanishes. But that panic rapidly morphs into aggressive mob style witness intimidation. When Flores is initially jailed before he starts cooperating with the police, AC manages to locate Flores' home address. Which is terrifying. AC shows up at the house, sits down in the living room and speaks directly to Flores' girlfriend Sasha and her mother. I want you to put yourself in Flores shoes here. You have the son of an FBI agent who just murdered a child sitting in your living room. Infiltrating a co-conspirator's domestic sanctuary is a highly sophisticated intimidation tactic. Because he's not outright threatening them, right? Exactly. You don't need to make a direct threat of violence if you can demonstrate unimpeded access to the target's vulnerable loved ones. The physical presence in the living room is the message. AC acts like this best friend. He offers to pay for Flores' defense attorney. He offers to put money on Flores' jail books

23:26so you can buy commissary items. To a naive observer, he is helping a friend in need. But Flores knows better. Yeah, Flores decodes the message instantly. He interprets this correctly as witness intimidation. I know where you live. Don't tell on me. And the weaponization of financial support is a classic control mechanism in organized crime. How does that work? By funding the legal defense, AC guarantees that the attorney's strategy prioritizes his protection over Flores' cooperation. By funding the commissary account, he establishes a debt of loyalty while constantly reminding Flores of his surveillance. It is psychological warfare. Designed to trap them. Yes, to trap Flores in a state of compliance through dependency and fear. Well, after Flores bonds out temporarily, the mask slips entirely. AC visits him again and issues a final ultimatum. He tells Flores point blank that if the police come for him, he refuses to go to prison. He declares he will, quote, go out in a shootout. A literal death threat disguised as a suicide threat.

24:28Right. And then he attempts to force this twisted logic onto Flores, prepping him to take the fall. He insists that Flores has to take the blame for the murder entirely because Flores is the one who posted the car on Facebook marketplace. He is externalizing his absolute desperation while simultaneously trying to rewrite the hierarchy of the crime. It makes no sense. The Facebook ad didn't kill anyone. No, but AC is attempting to elevate a digital footprint into the primary act of culpability while completely minimizing the 20 bullets you fired. He is demanding that Flores absorb the entire legal impact of the homicide based on a clerical error in the cover-up. And the shootout threat. The threat of suicide by cop is designed to corner Flores. If you talk, you trigger a bloodbath. Wow. But that pressure cooker of intimidation is actually what ultimately breaks Flores. He realizes AC will sacrifice him without a second thought. So Flores demands protective custody and agrees to cooperate. And the detectives handle this part brilliantly. They really do. They execute a masterclass in operational security

25:31to protect their new star witness. They meticulously place a seal on the arrest warrants so the public and, more importantly, AC remain blind to the fact that Flores talked. Which is crucial for his safety. And they orchestrate separate housing pods at the Metropolitan Detention Center to ensure AC cannot physically reach Flores once he's arrested. Yeah, that procedural segregation is vital. In the ecosystem of a detention center, a cooperating witness against a high-profile target has a life expectancy measured in hours, if their status leaks. Literally hours. Yes. The sealed warrants act as a legal quarantine, preserving the integrity of Flores' testimony while allowing the tactical teams to hunt AC without him realizing his trusted driver is the one guiding the missile. So the trap snaps shut. Thomas AC is arrested. The prosecution builds a mountain of charges, first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, conspiracy, tampering with evidence. They threw the book at him. AC pleads not guilty.

26:32A massive trial is scheduled for 2026. The justice system is grinding its gears, preparing for this highly publicized courtroom battle, involving the son of an FBI agent. And then the shocking twist. Right. The entire legal apparatus hits a massive brick wall. Earlier this summer, 21-year-old Thomas AC was found unresponsive in his jail cell. Despite life-saving measures, he's pronounced dead. And that sudden death of the primary defendant it induces a systemic shockwave through the entire prosecution. This is such a jarring end of the story. I mean, we have all this build up, a trial looming, and then the main suspect dines in his cell. The momentum of this investigation, the SWAT raids, the digital tracking, the interrogations, all of it just evaporates into the walls of that cell. Because the machinery of justice is designed to process living targets. When the target expires, the legal framework essentially collapses in on itself.

27:32So how does the legal system even process this? Under the legal doctrine of a Bateman Abinitio, the death of a defendant prior to a conviction essentially wipes the slate clean from a legal standpoint. Wipes it clean? Yes, because AC was never found guilty by a jury of his peers, his presumption of innocence remains permanently intact in the eyes of the law. The state cannot prosecute a corpse. The charges are dismissed, the trial is canceled, and the legal narrative against Thomas AC terminates without any resolution. But the shockwave doesn't stop with AC. It hits Michael Flores directly. Flores initially pleaded not guilty, but later took a plea deal for conspiracy and evidence tampering in February. Because he thought he was going to testify against AC. Exactly. That deal was his lifeline. But with AC dead, Flores cannot testify against him. You can't take the stand against an empty chair. Right. And plea agreements involving co-conspirators are essentially contracts of exchange. The state offers a reduction in penal exposure, lighter charges, shorter sentences,

28:32in explicit exchange for the defendant's testimony against the primary target. But he can't fulfill his end of the bargain now. Does his plea deal just shatter? It creates a massive procedural vulnerability for Flores. While the state may honor the reduced charges out of an acknowledgement of his initial cooperation, his leverage at sentencing is completely gone. He cannot perform the action that justified his leniency. He is left totally exposed. Yes. He faces sentencing in November, looking at up to 20 years in prison. He navigated the intimidation, flipped on his cartel-style co-conspirator, sought a path out, and now he is the only person left alive to absorb the punitive weight of the state. He holds the bag while the triggerman escapes the judgment of a jury. But how does the family of 13-year-old Michael Tub find closure when the primary perpetrator never faces a jury? That is the true tragedy here. The death of Thomas AC isn't justice. It's a robbery. It deprives the victims of the structural closure

29:33that a trial provides. Because the legal system just stops functioning. Exactly. The adversarial trial system, despite its flaws, serves a vital psychological function for society and for the victims. It forces the accused into the light. It demands that the mechanics of the tragedy be laid bare, entered into the public record, and judged by the community. It gives them an endpoint. Yes, a definitive endpoint to the ambiguity of the crime. When a defendant dies in a cell, the victims are denied that catharsis. They are trapped in a permanent state of unresolved grief, denied the opportunity to look the man who murdered their son in the eye and hear a verdict pronounced. It's just heartbreaking. So we've mapped the blast radius of a profoundly senseless event. Grievance born at a party, armed with a casually placed handgun, driven by cocaine money, obscured by digital incompetence and executed through heavy tint. And it resulted in a completely avoidable tragedy.

30:34It resulted in the slaughter of a 13-year-old boy who had absolutely nothing to do with any of it. It's a terrifying reminder of the fragility of life and the ripple effects of unchecked anger and access to firearms. It really is. But I want to leave you with a final thought to mull over. Something we didn't really touch on yet. Assume for a moment that Thomas Hasey had not died in his cell. Assume the 2026 trial proceeded his plan. OK. In a courtroom setting, how much would his status as the son of an FBI agent have influenced the jury? Would the defense have weaponized that background to craft a narrative of a good kid who made a tragic mistake under duress from his drug dealing driver? That's a very real possibility. How would the media have framed the victim versus the pedigree of the accused? In a system built on optics and narrative control with the scales of justice have remained balanced for Michael Tubb?

31:35Or would the institutional gravity of the AC name have irrevocably tilted the pursuit of accountability? Something to think about.