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EWU Crime Storytime's Gretchen Anthony Video: The Footage That Outlived the Cover Story
In March 2020, as Florida locked down, Gretchen Anthony's family began receiving texts saying she was in hospital with an acute case of COVID-19. She was not. EWU Crime Storytime's 46-minute documentary reconstructs how the cameras Gretchen had installed at her own home — and one attempted call for help through her Alexa — told the true story.
The channel, which has built 2.39 million subscribers on narrated single-case documentaries, takes on a case where the central evidence was created by the victim herself. Gretchen Anthony, 51, a human resources manager in Jupiter, Florida, and the mother of a 12-year-old daughter, had filed for divorce from her estranged husband, David Anthony, on February 28, 2020, and had installed security cameras at her home after he returned to the house.
The video, published on July 21, 2024, has drawn 16,689,069 views. Its title points at the case's defining fact: David Anthony reached up and disabled one of his wife's cameras with his own gloved hand — and the footage survived anyway.
At a Glance
| Video | “Killer Realizes Victim Solved Her Own Murder” |
|---|---|
| Channel | EWU Crime Storytime |
| Published | July 21, 2024 |
| Length | ~46 minutes |
| Views | 16.6M+ |
| Subject | The March 2020 murder of Gretchen Anthony in Jupiter, Florida; the COVID-19 cover story and the home-camera evidence |
What the Video Covers
The video opens on March 2020, in the Abacoa community of Jupiter, Florida. Gretchen and David had separated in late 2019, and he had moved in with his mother. In the weeks before her death, David — who believed the pandemic was an end-of-the-world event — had tried and failed to persuade Gretchen to travel with him to Costa Rica to escape it.
In the early morning hours of March 21, 2020, her cameras recorded a tall man in dark clothing lurking on her patio. Gretchen stepped out, there was muffled shouting, and she unsuccessfully tried to get her Amazon Alexa to call 911. A neighbor later told police she had heard a woman screaming. Garage footage showed a water jug smeared with blood — and David Anthony reaching up to disable a camera. Inside the house, police later found a broken picture frame, shards of glass on Gretchen's bed, a stained towel, and bleach stains across the garage floor.
The second half follows the cover story and the flight. Texts sent from Gretchen's phone claimed she was being moved to a CDC facility in Belle Glade, Florida — a facility that did not exist. Her Mini Cooper was found in a Jupiter Medical Center parking lot, her purse inside and blood on the steering wheel and gearshift. David sold her jewelry in Pensacola, phone pings tracked the route through Texas, and he was arrested in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on March 31, 2020, while walking his dog. He at first insisted Gretchen was still alive. Under a plea agreement he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and kidnapping and revealed where he had left her body: her remains were recovered on December 21, 2020, about three miles from her home. On January 14, 2021, he was sentenced to 38 years in prison.
Strengths
The evidence is the story. The documentary is built around footage and records rather than reconstruction: the patio and garage cameras, the neighbor's account, the texts, and the phone pings. Because Gretchen installed those cameras herself, the video can show the case turning on evidence she created — the strongest possible answer to a cover story built on her own phone.
The timeline stays clear across two stories at once. A disappearance investigation and a cross-country flight could easily tangle. The video keeps the order simple — the morning of March 21, the texts, the car at the medical center, Pensacola, Texas, Las Cruces — so a viewer new to the case can follow how each piece narrowed the search.
Gretchen stays at the center. Videos built around a fugitive husband can turn into a manhunt story. This one keeps returning to who she was — a mother who had filed for divorce, gone back to work, and taken practical steps to protect her home — which is why the evidence she left behind lands as it does.
Weaknesses
The title overstates its own point. Gretchen's cameras were decisive, but she did not solve the case alone: a neighbor's testimony, the nonexistent CDC facility, the blood in her car, phone records, and a plea agreement that produced her remains all mattered. The video itself is more careful than its headline.
Some visuals are illustrative, not evidence. The video's own description credits Getty Images for video and imagery, and viewers should keep in mind that not every image on screen is case footage — the real camera recordings are interspersed with stock material.
The legal aftermath is compressed. The plea bargain — why prosecutors accepted second-degree murder, and how much the family's wish for a burial drove it — gets less attention than the manhunt, and the sentencing hearing's discussion of David Anthony's mental health is only briefly addressed.
Who Should Watch
- Evidence-led case viewers — a documentary where cameras, texts, and phone records, not confession theatrics, carry the investigation.
- EWU and Explore With Us fans — the same narrated, footage-first approach, applied to a single contained case.
- Viewers who followed the COVID cover-up coverage — a full telling of a case many know only from the false hospital texts.
- True crime newcomers — a clear, chronological account that follows one case from disappearance to sentencing.
8/10
A clear, evidence-led account of a case that turned on the footage the victim left behind — the cover story is dismantled piece by piece, and Gretchen Anthony stays at the center of her own story. The title promises more than any one piece of evidence can deliver, but the documentary itself earns its conclusion.
Source: EWU Crime Storytime on YouTube (“Killer Realizes Victim Solved Her Own Murder,” published July 21, 2024); case background via CBS News and 48 Hours reporting on the murder of Gretchen Anthony and contemporary Florida reporting from Jupiter, Florida.