Hello there.
We’re doing a serious trip back to Beacon Hills today because I believe a great
injustice continues to taint the reputation of one of our most beloved Teen Wolf characters.
Malia Tate has been tried and convicted of murder in the court of public opinion. The accusations
are so pervasive that Ms. Tate has herself come to believe that she killed her adopted family.
I suggest the evidence against her has been misinterpreted and, in some cases, evidence
that could exonerate her is ignored completely by a fandom bent on casting Ms. Tate as a killer.
Today, I’ll present my closing argument in defense of Ms. Tate and you, as the jury,
will decide once and for all down in the comments if she is guilty or not guilty of murder.
If you enjoy revisiting Teen Wolf and rolling around in the nostalgia of the show,
consider subscribing to the channel and join us as we journey back to Beacon Hills each week.
Ladies and gentlemen, theys and thems of the jury, The Defendant, Ms. Malia Hale Tate,
is now afforded an opportunity denied to her before, the opportunity to argue her case,
but I'm not here to argue with you. What I'm going to do is to try and discuss the
reasonable inferences which I feel can be drawn from the evidence you’ve already seen.
I, like you, watched with great interest as the story of the deadly car crash
was laid out over the course of Season Three and Season Five of Teen Wolf.
I listened closely to the testimony of Sheriff Stilinski and Malia’s father.
But let’s reexamine what both of these men said about an accident that touched both their lives.
Sheriff: Eight years ago when I was elected sheriff of the county, my first official duty was to tell a man that
not only had his wife and two kids died in a car accident but, as best we could tell, the body of his nine-
year-old daughter had been dragged from the wreck by coyotes.
Tate: I spend eight years thinking that it was an accident now you're telling me that it could be murder?
Who the hell would want to murder my wife and girls, my whole family?
They both said it was the crash that killed the people in the car.
Both Stilinski and Tate testified to that fact.
The prosecution made much of the fact that the bodies were found covered in scratches and bite
marks. Their hope is that you will infer that Malia, in some uncontrolled shifting on the
full moon somehow attacked the others and caused the crash that killed them.
Indeed, this is what Malia herself firmly
believes happened. She believes it so much in fact that her eyes label her as a murderer.
But let’s see what else Sheriff Stilinski said about the accident.
Sheriff: We didn't find the car until three days after the crash. They'd driven off the road into a deep ravine.
The two bodies that were still in the car were covered in bites and slashes.
So, it was days before the bodies were discovered. And, as Mr. Tate testified,
he purchased rat traps because there is already an existing coyote population in that area of Beacon County.
Now, I admit it would be a bit of a coincidence if an unknown random coyote somehow entered the
wreck in those days before the bodies were found and scratched up the evidence
but as Young Mr. Stilinski testified.
Stiles: Coyotes, they scavenge. Right? So, couldn't they have just left the bites and the slashes?
So It's unlikely, but it’s not unreasonable given what we know.
Still, we have more evidence that it wasn’t a random coyote that damaged the bodies.
Remember Young Mr. McCall’s discovery at the crash site. As this image shows, the scratch
marks along the body of the vehicle were made by a supernatural in humanoid form. Had they been
regular animal claw marks or a fully transformed werecoyote, they would have been closer together.
Look closely at these marks. These marks are the size of an adult hand.
An adult hand, not the small hand of a 9-year-old werecoyote child which Ms. Tate was at the time.
Unfortunately, we don’t have this evidence in
court to test, but I would argue that if Malia’s claws don’t fit, you must acquit.
let’s look at the true cause of the crash which all the witnesses testified
is the cause of death in this case. In a recovered memory, Ms. Tate now recalls that her biological
mother, known only as Corrine or the Desert Wolf was firing on the car just prior to the accident.
Malia distinctly remembers the sequence - the guns fire, the windshield is struck by a bullet,
and then the car swerves off the road.
Gun fire. Bullet through windshield. Car swerves off the road.
Her memory ends there but so great is her guilt over these deaths
that she has actually worked this recovered memory, a recovered memory that completely exonerates
her as the cause of the crash, into a false narrative that she somehow killed her family.
Malia: I killed them because of you. I killed my own family.
Corrine: Your adopted family.
But members of the jury, I ask you, is that logical given the expert testimony in this case.
The crash killed the victims. Corrine, the Desert Wolf, caused the crash.
Corrine: But if it makes you feel any better, I didn't care about them. I was just trying to kill you.
Who is this Desert Wolf? Beyond her relation to Ms. Tate,
Corrine is known to law enforcement as a brutal assassin for hire.
As Braeden, our former federal marshal testified, Corrine has left a trail of bodies in her wake.
And as these photographs entered into evidence during the Marshal’s testimony
show, Corrine’s most recent victims have the same
slashes and bite marks that are described in the autopsies of the Tate family.
Remember Malia’s claws didn’t fit the damage to the car, there would have to be a fully grown,
human-shaped supernatural creature present to do this kind of damage.
Now, thanks to Malia’s recovered memory – we know there was a fully-grown human-shaped supernatural
at the scene of the crash who does fit this evidence.
Now, let’s rexamine Corrine’s stated motive for shooting at the car.
Corrine: You don't have a name. Talia Hale took you away from me before I could give you one.
What you do have is power, strength, speed and the capacity to heal. And you know where you stole it from?
Me.
She was there to kill her daughter. In her twisted mind, young Ms. Tate had to die that night, on
the full moon, so that Corrine could regain some power she thought stolen from her in childbirth.
We do not have direct testimony beyond these snippets, so I will ask you members of jury
to use logic. Once Corrine successfully ran the car off the road, would she then be content to
just leave the scene? Would she pack up her pistols and go home and
wait for the power boost that she believed would come from her daughter’s death?
Does this woman strike you as the patient type to just sit around waiting for Amazon to deliver her
stolen abilities? That scenario just doesn’t fit. And if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit Malia.
I don’t think any logical person could conclude that Corrine just left the scene.
No, it is far more logical that she went to the car to see her handy work
close up and to make sure her daughter was among the dead. When she found a dead girl
child but didn’t get the expected return of her full powers, I posit that Corrine became frustrated,
enraged perhaps and clawed up the bodies and the car itself.
But where was young Malia. We know, from subsequent incidents,
that when faced with high stress, Malia automatically shifts into animal form.
While this might be a talent inherent to werecoyote or something else, we know
it happens and we know it happened that night. We know it happened automatically
from the trauma of the wreck because she was unable to shift back to human for 8 years.
Where was Malia when Corrine reached the car? I suggest she was as far away as her little
hairy legs could carry her. That is what any logical examination of this evidence would suggest.
In order to believe Ms. Tate killed her family, the prosecution requires
you believe several improbable things.
That bullets flying at and striking the car didn’t cause the deadly crash.
That the woman shooting at the car in an attempt to kill her daughter
wouldn’t check to make sure that she had been successful.
And that a terrified little girl capable of turning into a very fast coyote
did not run away from the wreck as fast as she could
and instead decided to stick around just slashing and biting people she obviously loved very much
Well, members of the jury, I respect your intelligence too much to ask you to believe
improbable things. Those facts just don’t fit what we know. And if they don’t fit. You must acquit.
Thanks for watching, throw a guilty or not guilty in the comments. I’ll see you
next time we go back to Beacon Hills.