Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, your host on Pushing Up Lilies. This week, we’re taking a closer look at a case that hits hard – especially when it involves someone who once wore a badge. Former Carroll County deputy, Matthew Herpstreith, has been charged in connection with the tragic death of Jackson Kradle.
We’ll walk through the details of the case, including charges of reckless homicide, reckless conduct, obstruction of justice, and more. How does a trusted officer end up facing serious criminal charges? What really happened that led to Jackson’s death?
Join me as we unpack the events, the investigation, and the serious questions raised when those meant to protect and serve instead cause harm.
* Listener discretion is advised.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I’m your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? I hope y’all have had an amazing week. We’re back here with Pushing Up Lilies and I had so much fun tonight talking to a group in Lillisfil about what we do at our office and I love speaking to groups like that.
00:48
It’s so much fun, especially when they enjoy seeing pictures that not everybody would love to see. I mean, they’re very open to hearing about everything that we do and seeing all the pictures that we have.
01:04
It’s the Lewisville Police Volunteer Group in Lewisville, Texas. I don’t know how often they meet, but I had a good group of probably 30 plus people who are all super interested in what we do at the medical examiner’s office and so it’s kind of fun to fill them in and to answer the questions and to hear their stories.
01:27
They don’t get to go on death scenes, and they made it clear to me that they are sad about that. So they would definitely love to be able to come on scenes and several of them kind of have the ambition to do this job, which is great.
01:42
I love when people show interest, and I like to be able to educate. I just think that it’s never too late. We have someone in our office who’s in his 70s and is just as surprised he can be and he helps us so much.
01:59
I don’t know what we do. do it without him. So shout out to Bob. I just say, you know, follow your dreams. Told you all that before. I just think that that’s kind of one reason why I stay so busy. I don’t want to be gone or be on my deathbed and wish I had done something that I always wanted to do that I never tried.
02:20
Anyway, this week we are going to talk a little bit about Jackson Kradle. Now Jackson was 18 years old and he was found at 3.33 a.m. on Sunday, July 28th, and this was just last year, so 2024, to be face down in the roadway about a fourth of a mile south of Loughton Road on Route 78 north of Mount Carroll around Freeport, Illinois.
02:52
So he was found injured whenever the car that found him came up upon him. He was badly injured and was taking agonal breaths. Now, agonal breaths are something that we see a lot when someone is actively dying.
03:11
It’s kind of like a gasping respiration. So it’s actually a brainstem reflex and it occurs when someone isn’t getting enough oxygen. A couple came across him and their names are Amy Hubbell and Matthew Herpstreith.
03:29
Now Herpstreith was a Carroll County Sheriff’s Deputy who was off duty at the time. Amy was a dispatcher with the sheriff’s office, obviously also off-duty, and also an off-duty EMT. Now the call came in at about 5.18 a.m.
03:49
and coroner Matthew Jones and deputy coroner Jake Casey responded, and they arrived at about 5.56. And that’s a normal response time anywhere. I think we try to get to places within about an hour, so that’s a good normal response time.
04:05
Now the body was transported to the Savannah morgue for further inspection and fingerprinting. The couple, when they came across the body, reportedly rolled the body face up to check for signs of life.
04:19
And Amy was an EMT, and anybody that came across somebody in the middle of the road I think would do the same thing. Jackson Kradle, whose date of birth was 6-23-06, his ID was confirmed with comparison of him in Facebook pictures.
04:38
Now I can tell you that this is what I read online, and this may or may not be true, but in our office, we do not look at a person and look at their Facebook pictures and say, without a shadow of a doubt, that’s who this person is.
04:56
We actually have to have a government-issued ID, that looks exactly like the person we’re looking at before we will positively say beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is that person. We can’t use a school issued ID, it has to be government issued.
05:13
And it has to look like the person that we are going on the scene to see. If it doesn’t, it never hurts to bring them in unidentified and have them fingerprinted. We never ever ever want to misidentify someone that would be devastating.
05:31
If you called the wrong person’s family to let them know they were deceased. It’s happened in the past, not in our office. I’m sure it’s happened a lot of times in the past. And so that’s why these measures are put into place is just to prevent that from happening again.
05:47
I found it odd when I read that they actually IDed him and I get it. I mean, it was probably him. But even in situations where Someone is in their lock department with the same color of hair. If we can’t tell by the face that it’s the person we think it is, we’re still gonna have them fingerprinted.
06:07
I had a car accident one time. The driver and the passenger were both killed. They both had purses in the car. Each purse had five driver’s licenses in them. I can tell you that none of the driver’s licenses belong to either of these two women.
06:25
So if I had just randomly pulled a driver’s license out and said this is who this is, I would have been wrong. And that would have been devastating. Between the two of them, they had ten driver’s licenses.
06:38
So it’s crazy to think that, and I don’t know what they were up to. But we had to fingerprint them and they were none of the people whose driver’s licenses they had in their purse. Jackson Kradle’s father last saw him between midnight and 12:30 on Sunday, July 28, at which time Jackson left home wearing swimsuit trunks.
07:02
Now it was reported later that day that Matt Herbstryth actually may have driven over the body instead of finding the body. And this changed the investigation. I don’t know who reported that. Probably he told somebody or Amy told somebody.
07:21
But anyway, word got around that maybe he had struck the body and not just found it. So anyway, this changed the investigation completely. And once this was revealed, Sheriff Ryan Cloping turned the investigation over to the Illinois State Police.
07:35
And that’s much as we do here. If something goes on involving an officer or even involving a death investigator, it’s going to go kind of to a higher authority for obvious reasons. There’s a little bit of a conflict of interest.
07:50
So Herbstryth’s vehicle was a pickup truck, and it was inspected. which is the smart thing to do, look it over. And there was fabric matching Kradles, shorts, and also biological evidence, which could possibly be brain matter, tissue, hair, any of the above.
08:11
Biological evidence hanging from and stuck to the undercarriage. So this would indicate that he did strike the body, it’s underneath his truck. So, the tissue was identified as having come from the body of Jackson Kradle.
08:31
The strange thing is, and of course, we’ve all seen the show, so we know how it works. If you hit somebody, you go wash your truck really quick so that no one knows and there’s no blood on it and there’s no indication.
08:43
So anyway, the pickup truck had reportedly been washed between the time of the incident and the inspection of the vehicle. Now the driver of the vehicle. On that trip to the car wash was Herb Strith’s spouse.
09:00
And they were seen on the video at the car wash actually washing the pickup truck. An autopsy was performed by Dr. Mark Peters at the Winnebago County Coroner’s Suite in Rockford, again in Illinois. The preliminary report revealed massive injuries to the back, buttocks, and along the skull.
09:23
And there was also a puncture wound behind the right shoulder. Now Dr. Peters believes that it’s unlikely that another vehicle struck him and it was unlikely that he was beaten and placed on the highway.
09:39
And again, in situations like this, they look at every possible case scenario. The cause of death was ruled blunt trauma to the due to motor vehicle versus pedestrian crash. Now we have a lot of what we call auto-pedestrian accidents here.
09:58
Some of them turn out to be suicides. There are people who will run out in traffic in an attempt to kill themselves. And many times I think they want it to look like an accident so that maybe life insurance pays more to their family.
10:13
But many times our textile cameras catch these things, and we can’t actually look back at the video and it’s almost like they’re waiting to jump into a jump rope. They’re kind of waiting for the biggest vehicle.
10:26
They want the most bang for the buck. And so they’re going to wait until that big semi comes out there so that, I mean, who wants to survive if you’ve been hit by a vehicle? I’m sure it would not be the best life ever if you’re a quadriplegic and you try to kill yourself and it didn’t work.
10:44
Because then you can’t try again. So anyway, upon autopsy Kradle’s blood alcohol level was 0.192. Anyone with a blood alcohol level level of 0.192 would exhibit diminished motor skills and slow reflex time.
11:03
So that’s normal. I mean, we expect that if someone’s got a little alcohol in their system and THC was also detected. The weird, not weird, but maybe it is weird. The weird thing is a bone fragment was found in the drain as the car wash.
11:18
Now, I think that’s a really smart investigation for somebody to actually realize, hey, they washed this truck, let’s look down the drain, and they found a piece of bone. But guess what? It was negative for a match.
11:32
It was a great idea, though. I think that to look in there was genius. You never know what they would have found, but it was negative for a match. Anyway, with that blood alcohol level, Jackson would have likely exhibited poor judgment, impaired coordination, and slurred speech.
11:49
Delta-9 THC was present, and the levels in the blood alcohol level were negative. indicated that he had recent cannabis use in the previous one to three hours. Now THC, especially when you combine it with alcohol can definitely impair your motor coordination, it can alter your judgment and definitely slow your reaction time, which means that he posed a danger to himself for sure.
12:18
And the two combined could have led to risky behavior such as walking in the middle of the road, not paying attention, misjudging distance, all those things. Now Jackson’s girlfriend had seen him at 2 a.m.
12:34
on the morning of the incident. There was no evidence of impact injury, which means that if you’re standing and you’re struck, you would have injuries to your lower legs indicating that your legs had been impacted and you had been knocked over.
12:52
So there was no evidence of that. It was almost obvious upon autopsy, it sounds like that he had been already on the ground before he was struck. Now various abrasions on his body indicated that he was dragged, rolled or moved by the vehicle after impact, which we know that there was tissue and blood and stuff on the undercarriage of Herbstrah’s truck.
13:19
So it would make sense that his body got stuck on something and was dragged a little bit anyway until he realized that he had hit something. He was also struck at a high enough speed to cause lacerating and avulsion injuries to his scalp and buttocks, along with skull fractures and brain hemorrhage.
13:46
His injuries were consistent with already being on the ground when he was struck, and he was struck at a high speed. Now he could have triggered it. them fall in first. There were no signs of a struggle.
14:00
Basically, Herbstyrth lied and said that they found him. Herbstyrth, who was 44, was charged with reckless homicide, which is a class 3 felony, reckless conduct, which is a class 4 felony, obstructing justice, which is a class 4 felony, and attempt to obstruct justice, which is a class A misdemeanor.
14:24
He was also cited for failure to reduce speed. And he’s supposed to appear in court on April 17th. So we’re talking about nine days from now. So that’s kind of one reason why I found this story interesting is it’s fairly new.
14:43
Even though it did happen July of last year, he’s just now standing trial soon. So the charges of reckless homicide is that he acted in a reckless manner performing acts likely to cause death or great bodily harm to an individual.
15:02
He operated a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup truck on Illinois Highway 78 north of Mount Carroll, Illinois to the roadway on which he was traveling. He had been consuming alcoholic beverages continually since late afternoon the prior day and was otherwise distracted and tired and at that time drove a vehicle into and over Jackson Kradle who was a pedestrian thereby causing his death.
15:34
So that is why they’re charging him with reckless homicide because he was under the influence, and he was also driving over the speed limit. Now the charge of reckless conduct is that he was acting in a reckless manner, causing great bodily harm to Jackson Kradle in that he was operating a motor vehicle shortly after 3 a.m.
15:58
and was not keeping a proper lookout, was inattentive to the roadway and had been consuming alcoholic beverages since late afternoon the prior day and was distracted and tired and drove over Jackson.
16:14
Again he wasn’t paying attention is basically what that says. Now count three is obstructing justice that he furnished false information to the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department saying that Jackson Kradle was found in the middle of the road, and he went around him and that was a false statement.
16:39
He kind of told the police well I saw him laying there and I went around him and then we stopped to help him and of course you know what I always find funny is police know what takes place in the investigation.
16:53
They know that this is not gonna be believable. And I don’t know, maybe he was new, maybe he, I mean, there’s a difference between a new officer and a detective, but in this case, like he should have known, he wasn’t gonna be able to hide this.
17:11
In the fourth count, attempt to obstruct justice after he drove over Jackson, spray wash the pickup truck at this commercial car wash to try to wash away tissue and fluids and destroy evidence. And so that is the charge or the reason for the charge for attempt to obstruct justice.
17:36
It’s kind of crazy and sometimes I wonder when stuff like this happens, like why don’t people just come clean? And of course we know in this case, he was a sheriff’s deputy, he was driving under the influence, he struck a person, probably panicked and did.
17:54
the first thing that he thought to do, which was, try to cover it up, try to make himself look like a hero, like he was trying to save Jackson. It’s really sad. And they make mention of the fact that Jackson had been using THC and had been drinking.
18:12
But that doesn’t matter. When you’re driving a vehicle, you need to be paying attention and kind of assume that no one else is paying attention. And that’s what I do. I know in our town, there are a lot of homeless people.
18:27
Sometimes they walk along the side of the road and sometimes they’re riding their bike and sometimes they shoot out into traffic. I mean, lose balance on their bicycle or whatever. But again, I always just kind of think worst case scenario, what could possibly happen?
18:41
Now, Jackson was, again, not completely with it based on the THC and the alcohol. And he may have been walking down the middle of the road and it may have been super dark. But when you’re driving, you just absolutely have to pay attention.
18:58
Shouldn’t have been driving under the influence. Now, he will appear in court on April 17. And that is one trial that I really wish I could go to. I would love to go and see this all play out. I don’t know exactly how fast he was going, but I mean, how sad because he was the deputy.
19:22
He was a sheriff’s deputy. He was kind of held to a higher standard. And a lot of times it takes a while for the police to file charges just because they want to do a full investigation and they just want to make sure they get the facts right.
19:37
Now, I think that there maybe was a dispatcher that was fired in all of this. And initially, I believe he was released from the scene because they thought that he was a good Samaritan as anyone would.
19:51
But I know that there was a lot of backlash, behind I think there were indications that there were maybe some accomplices being the passenger Amy the EMT and then also the other dispatcher that they called whenever the call first came in.
20:08
Just really bad decisions in this case ruined a bunch of lives and I hate to hear stories like this. It’s devastating and we do have a lot of auto pedestrians here. Again some of them do jump out trying to commit suicide.
20:24
Many of them are just accidental. Those are the ones that literally I am walking down two mile stretch of the freeway with a brown paper bag picking up pieces. We definitely don’t want to leave anything in the roadway for a family to find later or anybody to find later.
20:44
So we pick up anything we can find that looks like it could have belonged to a person, and we send it. in the body bag with the body. We do the same on train pedestrians. Again, people jump out in front of trains to try to commit suicide.
21:01
And on those, many times we will walk down a couple of miles stretch of the train tracks to kind of make sure we don’t forget anything. And sometimes there are pieces of tissue under the train and on the front of the train.
21:17
And I tell you, I worked a train pedestrian not too long ago. And I was walking around the front of the train to try to take pictures. And there was a bunch of tissue on the front of the train. And it kind of, I guess, surprised me because I knew there was no way that that came from the one person that they struck.
21:35
It was a very little young lady and I was like, whoa, you know, and her body was intact enough that I knew that that was not her tissue on the front of the train. And so I talked to the conductor and he actually said, no, they hit stuff all the time.
21:51
They hit cows, they hit pigs, they hit goats. I mean, obviously whatever runs out in front of the train because the train is heavy and can’t be stopped quickly. It always kind of blew my mind. I never thought of it until that particular day when I see all this tissue on the front of this train.
22:08
And I was like, wow, those guys must be like, that’s hard for them to like go home with the end of the day and thank God, just, you know, killed a couple of cows. And I mean, you can’t keep them off the railroad tracks.
22:19
Obviously, they’re not smart enough to know that they’re not supposed to be up there, but super sad. And I just remember seeing all the tissue on the front. And of course, I’m not going to pull it all off because who knows what was hers and what was Mildred, the cows, you know, down the road?
22:35
I don’t know. To me, it would be devastating to be a train conductor and hit something and not be able to do anything about it. Now, of course, they do have good cameras on the front of the train. And so when someone does jump out in front of a train, we can actually kind of see how intentional it is.
22:51
We go back and look. at the cameras. We do have pedestrians that are struck all the time. In the class I was teaching earlier, you know, they had asked me a lot about it. The police chief said, yeah, you know, that’s why the highway’s shut down for a long time.
23:06
And many times it is. In auto pedestrian, it’s not only because we have to take pictures, but because we have to pick up pieces. Some are big and some are small and we don’t want to leave anything. Now later, sometimes the police department will come and hose off the roadway.
23:24
And we usually ask them to do that just kind of out of courtesy. We don’t want to leave a big spot of blood on the road and make everybody wonder what happened. The fire department’s very good about hosing off the roadway or trying to help kind of clean up the area and make it look a little more or a little less like something happened, I guess, would be the best way to say it.
23:44
But officers are people too, I guess, is what it amounts to. It’s a shame that this happened. The kid was out there wandering and got struck by someone who wasn’t paying attention and then tried to cover it up.
24:02
Whew, busy day kind of at the ME’s office, just trying to play catch up from the weekend kind of is what we do. This past weekend wasn’t as busy though as it has been. Anyway, next Wednesday on WFAA, which is channel eight, they have a segment called Poppin Podcasts on Good Morning Texas, where they talk about local podcasts and I will be on next Wednesday morning.
24:29
They did do a write up about me and the podcast in one of the local papers, the Denton Record Chronicle. And so that is available online to view. Y’all I’m getting the stuff in for these boxes and it is crazy.
24:44
Y’all are going to absolutely love these. Pretty soon our website will be up so that you can actually place the orders, but you’re going to want these because these are amazing. Like I’m putting stuff in there that I would want even with my background.
24:59
Y’all are going to love the stuff in here. I hope you have a great week and I look forward to talking to you next week. See y’all soon. Bye. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
25:11
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