# How Did One Detective’s 11 Failures Destroy the Murder Case Against Aaron Spencer?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/true-crime-today-daily-true-crime-news-interviews-568948/how-did-one-detective-s-11-failures-destroy-the-murder-case-against-aaron-spencer
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/true-crime-today-daily-true-crime-news-interviews-568948/how-did-one-detective-s-11-failures-destroy-the-murder-case-against-aaron-spencer.md
Podcast: [True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews](https://stenobird.com/podcast/true-crime-today-daily-true-crime-news-interviews-568948)
Published: 2026-06-10T11:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://audioboom.com/posts/8914486
Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/audioboom.com/posts/8914486.mp3?modified=1781029498&sid=5001260&source=rss
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/true-crime-today-daily-true-crime-news-interviews-568948/episodes/how-did-one-detective-s-11-failures-destroy-the-murder-case-against-aaron-spencer
Duration seconds: 1142

## Resource

One detective. Eleven documented policy violations. A dashcam SD card that could have recorded everything — gone. And a judge who said the only appropriate response was to throw out the entire case. That’s the core of Judge Ralph Wilson’s 19-page order dismissing the second-degree murder charge against Aaron Spencer. Spencer — an Arkansas father and Army veteran — shot and killed Michael Fosler after finding the sixty-seven-year-old with his thirteen-year-old daughter. Fosler had been charged with 43 felonies involving Spencer’s child and was free on a fifty-thousand-dollar bond with a no-contact order. The case turned on a dashcam from Fosler’s truck. It was dual-facing — covering the front, the cab, and potentially the rear. Detective Robbie McCain removed it from the truck without photographing its position. He pulled the SD card and viewed it on his personal laptop. He stored the camera in an office envelope, not the evidence room, for over a year. When the AG’s forensics unit finally received the camera, the card was missing. Wilson rejected the state’s negligence defense and found bad faith. The ruling noted that the footage was the only potential neutral evidence of what happened that night. Spencer has a constitutional right not to testify. His daughter’s testimony could be affected by trauma. Without the dashcam, there was no objective record. Wilson called his own remedy “extraordinary and extreme” — and used it anyway. Sheriff Staley terminated McCain the following day. An outside legal analyst breaks down the significance of this ruling — the language Wilson chose, the legal standard he applied, and what the bad faith finding tells us about how this case was investigated from the beginning. Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https…

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