Record and spell your last name. >> Cody Layton, L A Y T O N. >> What is your occupation? >> I'm a police officer with the St. George Police Department. >> And you currently work in the detective unit? >> Yes, sir. >> Person crimes? >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. Um you are the lead investigator on this case involving Mr. Kingston. >> Yes, I am. >> Okay. When did you become first involved in this case? >> I believe it was May 27th when that case was assigned to me. >> Okay. And the incident for which you were investigating happened allegedly when? >> Uh February 23rd. >> Okay. So sometime before you got involved. >> Yes. >> Okay. Um and what procedure did you go through to get familiar with the case once you were assigned the case in May of 25? >> Uh so typically I you know with this case I reviewed the initial officer's reports um and any other reports attached to the case as well as reviewing any body camera footage that's attached to the case. >> Okay. Uh and was there initial officer report on this case? >> Yes, there was. >> And who was the officer on that? >> I believe it was Officer Kim Childs. >> When did that report um when was that report made? >> I believe February 27th. >> Okay. In in what setting was that report made? >> Uh Officer Childs was assigned to St. George Regional Hospital um and uh the alleged victim went to the hospital to get a sexual assault exam and whenever a victim of of sexual assault goes to the hospital the on-duty officer at the hospital is advised of that and takes an initial report. >> And Officer Childs was the one who did that. >> Yes. >> Okay. The alleged victim went to the hospital on what day? >> Uh February 27th, I believe. >> Okay. Um how many days after >> So it'd have been four days. >> Okay. >> And what did Officer Childs report about this incident from the victim? >> Uh so, >> Excuse me. >> So, the when officers take an initial report of of any type of sexual assault report, uh they just take the minimum information of, you know, who, what, when, where, that type of thing, and then then that gets forwarded to the investigations division. >> Okay. What information did the alleged victim give to Officer Childs on that date? >> Uh just that she had been sexually assaulted at her apartment and had requested sexual assault exam. >> Okay. Was an exam performed on that date? >> Yes. >> And that is that exam was performed by whom? >> Uh I'm not sure of the particular SANE nurse, however, it was just a SANE nurse at the hospital. >> And what is a SANE nurse? >> Uh it's a a nurse specifically trained to perform those sexual assault exams. >> Did you review that uh the report from that SANE nurse? >> Uh initially, no. I have I had since the alleged victim had requested the the the assault the kit be restricted at that time, but later after I had met with her, she signed a release form, and then I was able to review that that report. >> Um did the alleged victim make any statements to the SANE nurse at the time of the examination? >> Yes, she did. >> Did you review that? >> I did. >> Do you recall what the alleged victim told the SANE nurse at the examination? >> Uh the just that she had been raped and And she had it was non-consensual. The Yeah. >> Okay. After reviewing Officer Child's report, what did you do? >> Uh I reached out to the alleged victim by phone and set up a forensic interview at the County Attorney's Office. >> Why was there no investigation between February and May? >> Uh because the alleged victim wasn't sure if she wanted to proceed with the investigation and then she later contacted the police department and said she wanted to proceed. >> Did she tell you why at that point in time she wanted to proceed? >> Not that I'm aware, just that that she was she was ready to move forward. >> Okay. And then you set up a interview at where? >> At the Washington County Attorney's Office. >> Okay. And describe how this particular interview happened. >> So forensic interview is is done by a forensic interviewer at the at the County Attorney's Office. The alleged victim and the interviewer are in a room alone together and I observe the interview via webcam recording. >> You reviewed or were present and and saw the interview live? >> Yes. >> Okay. The entire interview? >> Yes. >> All right. What was the next step in your investigation after the interview? >> Um the alleged victim had had made some disclosures about what had happened and and their form of her form of communication with the defendant. Um, like I said earlier, I had her sign the release for the the saying report and that sexual assault exam. And so I submitted that to be able to review that exam and then at that point it was just me trying to find the communications between the alleged victim and the defendant and and just start trying to put the pieces together. >> Okay. During the forensic interview, um, just to be brief, the the alleged victim did disclose that she had allegedly been raped by Mr. Kingston. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. So what laboratory evidence did you submit for testing? >> Uh, the the the the kit that was collected at the hospital at the time of the the exam was sent up to the state crime lab. >> Okay. Did you receive that back? >> Yeah, I received the report, yes. >> How long did that take for you to get that? >> Uh, approximately 7 months. It was an extremely long time. >> Uh, and and what was the purpose of sending that to the state crime lab? >> Uh, to test for any any DNA evidence. >> Okay. Uh, did you have any information from Mr. Kingston when you sent that rape that uh, evidence up to the state crime lab? >> As far as >> Had you Had you interviewed him, talked to him at all? >> I had not, no. >> Okay. So you didn't know what his position was going to be uh, about this alleged incident. >> Correct. >> Okay. And you received the evidence back, uh, the results of the evidence back approximately 7 months later, you say? >> Yeah, I I could I could look at my report and give you the exact date, but yeah, it was approximately 7 months or so. >> Was there any um, positive DNA evidence that came from that? >> No, the report indicated that there no male DNA was detected in the in the kit. >> Do you have any idea why in your training experience? >> Uh yeah, it it varies. Um it was like I said earlier, it was about 4 days from the time of the incident to the time of the report. A lot of it depends on uh the alleged victim's hygiene, how well they take care of themselves. I believe uh if I'm if I'm remembering correctly, uh the alleged victim was on her period at the time of the exam, so that could have affected >> Okay. >> uh the DNA. >> Okay. What other steps did you take to further investigate this case? >> Uh so, the alleged victim had told me that uh she communicated with the defendant via Snapchat. And so, I I didn't have the defendant's any information on the defendant's Snapchat account, so I ended up uh drafting and serving a search warrant to Snapchat for the alleged victim's account to see if I could recover any of the messages that they had exchanged. >> Had you been able to rece- uh to obtain any evidence from the alleged victim's phone up to that point in time? >> No, I have not have not. >> Okay. Um did you get some results back from your warrants? >> Um I I did receive a response from Snapchat. However, there were no I did not recover any messages between the alleged victim and the defendant. >> Do you know why there were no messages there? >> Uh Snapchat has a very small retention period generally. Uh a lot of it depends on the user settings as well, so if if a user saves those messages to their phone um or changes the settings on how long those messages are stored, um that can affect whether or not those messages are still stored on Snapchat servers, as well as the fact that uh the alleged victim and the defendant had also blocked each other. >> Okay. And why was it that you were uh focusing on getting digital evidence from phones? >> So, in the forensic interview, the alleged victim had said that uh they had communicated through Snapchat and she had set some very clear boundaries as to what she was willing to do and not do. Um, and that those boundaries had been violated. And so, I was trying to recover anything that would show that she had set any type of boundary. >> Okay. And unfortunately, you were not able to to obtain that evidence. >> Correct. >> What was your next step in the investigation? >> Um, at that point, uh I had uh again, in the forensic interview, the alleged victim had mentioned that she had heard through friends that the defendant had been messaging people about the incident. Um, and so, uh I suspected there may be evidence on the defendant's phone. And so, I drafted and and received a search warrant for the defendant's phone. >> What Once you received the search warrant, what did you do to obtain that phone? >> Uh so, I contacted uh the BYU Police Department, Sergeant Smith. Uh I briefed him on the situation. He asked me for a copy of of the report to familiarize himself with it. I sent him a copy of the report, and then he contacted me later and said that he had seized the cell phone. >> Do you recall uh approximately when this was that that phone was seized? >> Uh I believe it was November. I think I contacted him November 24th or 25th. Um Yeah, it was it was late November, the 24th or 25th. >> Okay. And ultimately you received Mr. Parker's phone. >> Correct. >> Okay. Mr. Kingston's phone, sorry. Um What did you do at that point? >> Uh so, I attempted to do a uh digital extraction on the data in our police department with the software that we had. However, that uh was unsuccessful, so I took the phone over to Utah Tech University's forensics lab and submitted to them to complete the extraction. >> Okay. Did you obtain that extraction? >> I did. >> Did you find any uh evidence that would pertain to this incident? >> Yes, it Yes, it did. >> And what was that that you obtained? >> Uh I was able to recover uh the alleged victim's Snapchat handle as a contact saved in the defendant's phone, as well as one message that was recovered through that had sent been sent via Snapchat. >> Okay. Um Did you recover anything else? >> I recovered uh text messages between the defendant and a friend that that where they were discussing uh that day that the incident happened and and the events that happened that day. >> Okay. Was that were were those messages on the day of the alleged incident? >> Yes, sir, they were. >> Okay. Did you read those messages between um Mr. Kingston and his friend? >> Yes, I did. >> Um Did you form any opinions based upon what you read there as to whether or not um Mr. Kingston was going to meet the alleged victim for sexual intercourse. >> Yes, through from what I read, I I felt that that was his intent in going over to the alleged victim's house. >> What particularly in those messages between Mr. Kingston and his friend made you believe that he was going over there for sexual intercourse? >> They were using phrases like go get with the the alleged victim and uh the word cracked, which is a slang term for sexual intercourse. Uh that he was planning on he didn't know if he was going to crack her because she was making him upset. Um and then later on in in the messages after the alleged incident, he had texted the friend and said "Just cracked her, bro." >> Just cracked her what? >> Bro. Just like a slang term for a friend. >> Okay.