In the last 45 seconds, there is a faint voice, a distant yell, and the urgent dialogue between a woman and a 911 operator.
“There’s just someone screaming outside,” the caller begins on the recorded line.
The 911 call that recorded the last 45 seconds of Trayvon Martin’s life could be a crucial piece of evidence in the case against George Zimmerman, but what exactly was recorded is not clear.
Original audio: First 911 call | View transcript
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In the first seconds, there is a yell in the distance.
Audio forensics specialist Alan R. Reich hears Martin shouting “I’m begging you.”
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At the end of the 45 seconds, right before the gunshot, Reich hears a high-pitched “Stop!”
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This spectrograph, which shows the vocal characteristics of the recording, helped Reich phoenetically break down the word ‘stop.’
See how Reich analyzed the recording »
There is more distant yelling obscured by the operator — “Male or female?” — and the caller — “I think they’re yelling ‘help,’ but I don’t know.” There is a high-pitched scream, a kind of cry, and then the clearest sound of all.
“There’s gunshots. . . . Just one,” the woman says on the only 911 call to record what was happening in the dark at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated townhouse community in Sanford, Fla., on the night of Feb. 26.
Those recorded 45 seconds turned out to be a recording of the end of Trayvon Martin’s life.
And amid the conflicting, hazy and at times emotional reports from neighbors who heard and glimpsed only fragments of what was happening during those crucial seconds, the audio recording of them — from the start of the call at 7:16:11 p.m. until the gunshot at 7:16:56 p.m. — is perhaps the closest prosecutors and defense attorneys may come to an objective witness to the events that night.
It remains unclear exactly how the recording might be used in the court case, now underway, in which neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who said he shot the unarmed 17-year old in self-defense, is charged with second-degree murder.
Zimmerman defense attorney Mark O’Mara said Friday on CBS that the recording would require “a lot of forensic work-up.” And last week, Florida special prosecutor Angela B. Corey released a trove of documents that included an FBI analysis stating that the recording is inconclusive and a witness list that includes two audio experts who have said the opposite.
Two weeks before charging Zimmerman, who has pleaded not guilty, Corey hinted that the recording could be crucial.
“The exact words and whose voice is whose will be the critical issues,” she said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Legal experts say the recording could be enormously important or disastrous for either side, depending on what a jury determines it can hear.
But what happens when a potentially crucial piece of evidence in one of the most explosive court cases in recent memory is a poor-quality recording of overlapping voices and unintelligible yells, essentially a wilderness of sound?
If you can’t hear the 45 seconds, how do you hear the 45 seconds?
The answer may come down to which expert you ask.
Expert No. 1
One of those experts is Alan R. Reich, and his answer is that he is certain he can hear a young man he concludes is Martin pleading for his life, from the start of the 45-second recording until the end.
“I’m begging you,” he hears the younger of the two men yell as the recording begins.
Twenty-six seconds later: “Help me.”
In the last second before the gunshot: a high-pitched “Stop!”
In an effort to find out what might be discerned from the crucial 911 call, The Washington Post retained Reich, 67, a former University of Washington professor with a doctorate in speech science who has worked for prosecutors and defense attorneys in hundreds of criminal and civil cases over a period of more than 35 years.
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