Investigator
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It is rather disarming when you're trying to find the Hawks, and he's admitting to the money laundering piece on his side. It was unusual that someone would admit that to the police.
Once the press hit, immediately our tip line started going off.
Their boat was moored in Newport Harbor right off 15th Street, and they would use their small boat to travel back and forth from the dock to the well-deserved.
We met with Carter Ford and we went out to the boat. From a distance, you probably wouldn't notice too much. But as you get closer, the first thing you notice is that the boat was tied, that lines were hanging kind of over the side of the boat.
They were a very close-knit family. So if they couldn't be reached over a certain period of time, all kinds of alarm bells went off.
I knew they thought they might be selling the boat.
They bid me goodbye on the phone Monday morning. The next thing I heard was a voicemail from Jackie and said that, we're still at sea. I'll be in touch with you again.
For me, it was a worrisome mystery. I wanted more information. I wanted to know who was his would-be buyer.
Most missing persons investigations, the person's found in a very short amount of time. It's either lack of communication or perhaps they went somewhere else that they weren't expected to. Jim Hawks, Tom Hawks' brother, he had already done his homework on his own. Once our investigators start talking with him, we knew we needed to really start looking hard.
They recovered her rather quickly. Keys was so accurate as to where her remains were. It was rather incredible how well he remembered that.
We still have a lot of unanswered questions at this point.
I had my police scanner on and I had it in my ear.
He's definitely picked a fighter with Samantha. I think she was just fighting in every way that she possibly could.
I told her that it was going to be a quick exchange as far as a ransom of some kind. And that was the impression she was under.
While Keyes is driving around Anchorage, he asks for Samantha's cell phone and Samantha tells him that it's still at the coffee hut. So Keyes drives back to the coffee hut in order to retrieve Samantha's cell phone.
It's after midnight, early morning hours, when Keys gets back to his residence. He takes Samantha into his shed, which is adjacent to his home. At the time, his girlfriend was in the home, was still awake. His daughter was also at home asleep.
She wasn't going to live.
At that point upon his return, Samantha is still in his shed.
He told us he had flown from Alaska into Las Vegas, and that he had rented a car there, and he had driven from Las Vegas to Texas to attend his sister's wedding.
We decided to perform a warrantless search on the vehicle, because if we hadn't, then Israel could have left in that car.
In the ATM videos, the person taking money out of the ATM wore what looked like the same shoes. When we opened the trunk and the ranger started going through things in the trunk of the car.
We found a gray hoodie that appeared to be the same hoodie that the perpetrator had been wearing in the ATM videos. And in the pocket of that was this gray piece of cloth that looked like a mask. We also found the amber shooting glasses. We got our guy.
After he was put under arrest, he was transported to the Lufkin Police Department. The Ranger and I do a thorough search of Israel's wallet, and we found Samantha's ATM card. Samantha's cell phone was in the car. At this point, we still don't know if he is the person who has abducted Samantha. but we are convinced that he is the person who was withdrawing money from the ATM.
As the pieces of the puzzle start coming together, it's a feeling like nothing you can ever experience. A girl's missing, and we might have the guy who took her. We might be able to find her. and bring her home safe.
We were able to see some computers from his home.
The whole shed was put onto a flatbed and taken back to the FBI building here in Anchorage.
It was just chaotic in the office. We're trying to find out absolutely everything we can about this individual. How is he connected to Samantha? Is he connected to Samantha at all? There is just a lot of mystery behind him. What does he do for a living? What's his criminal history like? Does anyone else live in his house?
At this point, Keyes is charged federally, extradited back to Alaska.
He's charged with theft of an access device, which is for the debit card, the use of that debit card.
Myself, Jolene, and some other investigators were in a separate room where we were able to listen in to what was going on.
We have no idea what to expect.
So we're just sitting there on the edges of our seat, just wondering what he's going to say.
So Valerie had actually come from work, so she was literally wearing scrubs from the vet clinic along with Dr. McDaniel monogrammed on the scrub jacket.
No, we're not trying to hide her identity at all.
And he finally gets her to say that she does, in fact, want him to be killed.
And that's when he said, well, if you want that done, it's going to be another $10,000. And Valerie said, OK, I have to pay you out in installments of it, but I'll pay you $10,000.
She had just gotten divorced and taken a loan out of $1.2 million to pay Mac McDaniel as part of that divorce. So liquidity may have been an issue for them. So she had to pay $1.25 in the divorce? She had to take a loan out.
I believe Leon and Valerie paid for the bill. It was very nice of them.
They do a series of pictures of him dead.
She is in no way surprised that this happened. She knew that he had a temper, he would explode, and now that she was denying him access to herself, like, he became obsessed with her.
So at that point, we've closed both cases, but we decided we wanted to go an extra step. And so that extra step was the death notice.
Absolutely. I think right there, that's great evidence for us.
He stands at the threshold of the apartment. They allow her to go get her daughter. She brings the daughter to the threshold and then hands the daughter off to Mac. And that was the last time that she saw her daughter.
Something is off. She's just a little girl. You think she's faking it? She has adult teeth? There are signs of puberty?
Not for the state, Your Honor. No, Judge, thank you.
They keep having to tell her to speak up, and she says things like, you know, so you wanted your husband killed. You know, you can't nod. You have to say yes. Be like, yes, that's what I wanted.
How does Valerie get from well-respected vet to hiring a hitman to suicide? I think that you're going to find this linchpin of that is Leon Jacob.
She wouldn't hang out with her friends anymore, which is all classic stalker method of operation. You cut them off from their friends, you seclude them.
Thank you. The state of Texas calls Megan Varikas.
And ultimately, did the police file charges in that case?
Do you know why they wanted to take photos of you?
Did the officers ask you to do something for them?
Is that you laying face down in the grass with that pig's blood all over you?
That would have put you sleeping with Valerie McDaniel just seven days after you and Megan broke up, correct?
Okay. So when you tell the members of this jury that you're heart sick over Megan, that's not really true, is it?
Did you not want anybody hurt when you said, inject her with potassium chloride, stop her heart, untraceable?
This defendant cannot be trusted to live among us. He's terrorized too many people for too long. The only appropriate punishment in this case is life.
They have Zach call Leon and say, hey, I got a guy. He's going to do the hit for us.
Did he just say both issues? So HPD is learning, oh, there's a second person they're trying to take care of.
At that point, they decide to meet at the Olive Garden.
We had the exits from this residence. We saw cars going by, but we couldn't identify them. The cameras didn't have enough resolution.
At this point, it's four years into the marriage, and it's in fact in a very precarious position. And Celeste meets someone who is going to change the course of her marriage to Stephen forever.
At this point, it's 1999, four years into her marriage with Stephen Beard. And Celeste knows the marriage is in trouble.
Once they're out of St. David's Pavilion, they continued their friendship, and they would sometimes meet several times a week in the evenings.
steve became irate and ordered her to leave she was never welcome there again i remember celeste thinking it wasn't a big deal it was a big scene in front of all of her friends it wasn't romantic she never kissed her or she kissed you no she tried to kiss me after that barbecue stephen was really upset and he made it clear to celeste that he wanted a divorce
As they have other times in the past, the two reconciled. It's a pattern.
Detectives also learned that at the time the intruder is entering the house, Jennifer is not even there. She's at the lake house. And Celeste is sleeping in Christina's room in another part of the house.
The detectives also learned that it appeared the intruder went in the house and made a beeline for the master bedroom where Steven Beard was sleeping alone in bed. Stood at the foot of the bed and fired one shot into him.
The Austin Country Club was a place where prominent, wealthy members of the community would go, and one of its members was a man named Stephen Beard, a very successful TV executive.
Three and a half months after Stephen Beard was shot, he died.
Sad. Very sad. After an investigation, the charges against Tracy are elevated to murder. Meanwhile, Celeste goes on with her life, spending Steve's money.
Celeste agrees to check herself into Timberlawn for some psychiatric care. Meanwhile, her daughters are just trying to get their lives back to normal.
Celeste wants Christina to come to the hospital to get her, but Christina won't do it. Instead, Jennifer drives to the hospital, and Celeste is livid.
Jennifer dropped Celeste off at home. The twins are not living with their mother anymore, and they don't want her to know where they're living. They're getting a little scared of her.
Is that tape the original recording?
Stephen Beard was a very wealthy TV executive in Austin, Texas, who married a woman who was a waitress at his country club named Celeste.
What happened is that an intruder broke into his house, shot him in the stomach, and he would die months later.
With the judge's decision, she's going on with her life. But it did raise a few eyebrows, which she soon did.
She was adopted by Edwin and Nancy Johnson almost immediately.
The prosecutors are Allison Wetzel and Gary Cobb, veteran, experienced trial attorneys.
Ms. Tarleton, please stand, raise your right hand, and please start your line of work. And the main drama of the case... Please state your name, please. Tracy Tarleton. ...is when Tracy takes the stand.
These are your own internal conversations with yourself. You put your thoughts down. It's a real window into a person's head, heart, soul.
It was pretty clear that this now was a she said, she said. Tracy says one thing, Celeste says another.
The move to Washington did not sit well with Celeste. It was hard for her to adjust.
And of course, the key part, the very end of that recording. It's one of the biggest moments of the trial.
Is that tape the original recording? They spliced the tape.
But remember, there's also the question about the thousands of dollars that Celeste paid to her assistant, Donna Goodson.
Celeste may not have taken the stand, but jurors still heard from her. Do you have the tape in ready to go? Instead, they see a video deposition from that civil case that was never played back then.
At some point, Jennifer decides she wants to live with her father and leaves Christina alone with her mother. And Jennifer is now in another state.
In its closing argument, Dick DeGaran told jurors the prosecution's case failed.
But Allison Wetzel and Gary Cobb tell jurors it's clear that she's guilty.
After weeks of hearing compelling, riveting testimony from both sides, the jury finally has the case.
And she meets a man, a member, Stephen Beard, who's going to change her life. For everything Celeste had been through in her life, looking at Stephen Beard, he represented what she was looking for, stability, wealth, someone to take care of her.
It seems that Celeste has found what she's looking for in Steven Beard. But is her erratic, unpredictable behavior going to hurt this relationship too?
Stephen started a cable station in the Austin area that he eventually was able to sell, and he made millions of dollars overnight.
Stephen may have been impulsive in his relationship with Celeste, but he was careful about his money.
He tells police that the night before, he was watching the basketball game.
Through DNA testing, police determined that Lintel Washington was indeed carrying Robert Mark's baby.
They do these forensic interviews of children with people who are specifically skilled in this area to interview a child without further traumatizing them.
Lintel's daughter is in the backseat of the car while all of this is going on.
Once police confirm that that is indeed Lintel Washington, who they found dead in a ditch, police then charge Robert Marks with her murder. They charge him with feticide and several other charges.
So another woman emerges in this story, Trameka Jackson. Trameka is also having an affair with Robert. Lintel doesn't know about her. Robert's wife doesn't know about her.
Tremika is able to place Robert at the scene where the car was abandoned with Lintel's little girl.
Trameka has a Dodge with very specific lights. Think of it as a bar of lights.
She is able to describe in detail what she's seen, even if it's only in little bits and pieces.
I think it's safe to say that a lot of people in the community were pretty pleased that he was behind bars, considering what he was charged with. So it was really surprising when bail was set and he actually was able to leave jail. Bail was over $800,000.
It is the strongest moment in the trial, and I think that they handled it so well.
It may have been in the context of a mind of a three-year-old, but everything she said was accurate and backed up by the physical evidence.
May 24th is a really important date because that's the day that Lintel goes to the doctor, gets a sonogram, and it's revealed that they are having a little girl.
Rather than searching for things like, I don't know, baby bassinets online, he starts looking for guns online. He starts researching bizarre stories involving pregnant women who have gone missing or were murdered.
Robert Marks was sentenced to life in prison, and he is actually in one of the worst prisons in this country.
I hope that somewhere inside of her, that strong little girl realizes that she stood up for her mom.
He has told Lintel Washington that he's very unhappy, that he is divorcing his wife, and that he's in love with her and wants to have a life with her.
Something horrible has happened to Lintel Washington. And where is she?
Robert tells Lintel that he's going on a trip for a few days. He's going to Panama City to go to a family reunion.
She saw a picture of Robert and his wife on a cruise. She saw it on social media.
Lintel gets to Robert's house, and there's a huge revelation. Remember how she believed that they lived on separate floors because they were getting a divorce?
By the time Robert returns from his cruise on June 6, he has got one angry Lintel Washington waiting for him, and he knows he's got a problem.
Just days later, Lintel is missing. Lintel Washington and her daughter lived in a one bedroom apartment very close to where Lintel's car was found.
This is an urgent situation. They need to find Lintel Washington because she's clearly injured.
And all Patrick says to him is just, tell my parents I'm so sorry. The police arrive. The patrolman's applying pressure.
She sees these three guys run out looking like, I think the word she used was they robbed a bank in a movie. So she made a mental note to check the license plate, and when she looked, it was a paper dealer tag, so the kind of tag you have when you have just bought a car.
And all of a sudden you have Patrick murdered with these pills around him. It launched two investigations. The first was, who killed Patrick Moffley? And the second was, where did he get these GG249 manufactured fake Xanax pills? And there's this question of, how did this happen so close to the College of Charleston campus?
There are all these questions about how could there be 10,000 pills at this college house?
When the police searched the bedrooms, they found a lease agreement to a different residence that had been signed by one of Patrick's housemates. The address was under surveillance in an active investigation.
About five months, six months before Patrick was killed, The Charleston police had a confidential informant buy a small amount of Xanax from a dealer. They arrest the dealer. They say, who gave you these drugs? And he told them it was Zachary Kligman. and laid out a very extensive picture of Zach's drug operation.
He said, this is a guy who sells everything from Coke from Atlanta, you know, LSD, and millions of Xanax pills. And he has this stash house called The Tree House. And so the police start a pretty small time investigation of Zachary Kligman. They installed a security camera overlooking the stash house, the tree house on Gaston Street. It was just right there, walking distance from campus.
Before the murder, you had one housemate who signed the lease for a stash house. So all of a sudden, there's this pretty tight link between where Patrick is killed and the stash house that they're already monitoring. Patrick's death turned this drug investigation into something real.
Dealing Xanax is a really fast way to make a great profit. You can make $7 a bar. So, I mean, that's a massive margin.
Patrick's housemates, they turn out to be very valuable as witnesses. The detectives have one of the housemates wear a wire. He's telling the housemate like, oh, I had just like pounds of like weed and like a million Xanax pills here. So the detectives immediately go to Zach's house. They arrest him. They find more drugs at his house.
And they basically tell him, you know, we have you on all of this stuff.
So Zach lays out this entire drug ring with the shipping raw alprazolam powder from China through Vancouver and Toronto and Montreal down to South Carolina, finding a house for it, getting a pill press, pressing it into pills, and then shipping it out both through the fraternity system and pledges, but also once again on the dark web is now a completed product that they can ship all over the world.
The complexity of that compared to sort of the kids that you might meet at a bar in Charleston, it's pretty mind-boggling. The police are building a drug case on Zach. The drug investigation and the homicide investigation were sort of on two separate tracks. As more people brought up Zach, they would say like, yeah, we've already looked into that.
But the homicide investigation narrowed very quickly. Policemen all over the city are looking for this red Jetta, seen at the time of the killing. And that night, after Patrick was killed, in West Ashley, they find it parked.
And they used the pretense of seeing some marijuana on the dash, and they towed the car away.
You have no direct evidence. All you know is that a car pulled up to the house.
Then they go through Patrick's phone and find out that Charles is saved in Patrick's phone as Dollar T and that he had texted him to set up this drug deal at the time of the murder. They found their dollar T. It's this guy, Charles Munchen.
At the same time, he's opening his home to people for whom drug dealing is a completely different proposition. It's not this fantasy adventure. It's a means of survival. And when drug dealing is a means of survival, then violence is also sometimes a means of survival.
And from there, the case really comes more about, one, finding the surveillance evidence, and two, trying to find who else was in the car.
basically going to every store, school, anything in the neighborhood. And a pizza restaurant and the school down the street and one other store had cameras facing the street. And they were able to go through all the footage and basically see this red car pulling up right before the murder and then leaving right after.
In March 2016, homicide detectives arrested Charles Mungin.
Patrick's death turned this drug investigation, funneling a lot of Xanax into that sort of college party scene into something real. Up until that point, it was really just a detective with a camera checking in on a stash house. All of a sudden, this becomes like a 30-person task force involving the DEA, the FBI, state law enforcement, city law enforcement.
One of Patrick's housemates who opened the door and saw men going into Patrick's room got a pretty good look at John John's face and was able to recognize him in a lineup.
Stephanie Linder put together a very impressive and long list of witnesses. I mean, she really built the case sort of from the ground up.
The story that the prosecution presented, Stephanie Linder's narrative was, it was a drug robbery gone wrong. Basically, Charles knew that he could probably get 10,000 Xanax bars, and so he set up this deal. And then he picked up two partners and went just to do armed robbery. That was the idea. what the detectives believe happened.
They fought and the fight escalated to a point where they shot him, grabbed as many pills as they could and fled.
his friends would want to talk about. The story of when the cops busted one of Patrick's parties and he ran up into a tree. He was an amazing tree climber. And then he's hiding in the tree and the cops are looking up the tree and he whispers, there's no one up here.
The party scene is fraternities and sororities for sort of pre-games, and then everyone goes out on King Street. And King Street is one of America's great drinking streets. It's sort of like Bourbon Street or Sixth Street, but with fewer tourists.
You know, you can think of lunar rituals and secular worship. It is not black magic and Satanism.
The only real solid clue that they have at this point are these two letters.
Turns out David Hoshaw was more dangerous than anyone imagined.
Accepting a plea agreement for two life sentences, first degree murder, David had to stand before the victim's loved ones, the Goyenas, and he had to admit to killing Angel and Vonda.
Within the blood-soaked bed, you have this heartbreaking image of her childhood teddy bear, also soaked in blood. It is an image that is hard to forget.
David Hoshaw agreed to interview with me over the phone since he is in a high security prison facility. David tells me that night he went to Angel's house to simply break up with her at one in the morning. How were you thinking the night would have played out?
They were really in tune with one another, more so as friends beyond that mother and daughter special bond.
Beyond that, they also loved tarot cards, reading each other's future and fortunes. They did everything together. They went everywhere together.
In 2006, Angel decides to put herself out there, so she signs up to a dating app, and then days after, she meets a man who's a father of two.
Angel's discovering so much more about David Hoshaw. He is an electrical designer, he's a scout master, he's seeming more and more to her like he could be the one. Within a matter of months, they fall in love, David proposes, and now he's moved in with her and Vonda.
Police track him down, and they tell him that they need him to come down to the station.
Days are passing and there's no arrest, no clues, no clear direction.
Now investigators cross-check her diary where she actually talks about going to the beach with her mom.
Prosecutor Phil Evans needs someone that he knows will get the job done.
Er springt auf und fängt an zu springen, im Wesentlichen Richtung mich.
The courtroom broke into hysterics. People screaming, people running out of the courtroom. The marshal grabbed him as he was going over the wall. Within a few steps that Keyes took, Jeff was right on him.
During the weeks after Israel had abducted Samantha, he was like excited on high. Maybe that was because he thought he'd gotten away with it already. And when he came to Texas, he wanted to do it again.
Israel war sehr schnell zu den Banknachrichten in Texas zu verurteilen. Aber er hat negiert, dass er jemanden genommen hat.
We took him to the ground and tasered him. It made me very uncomfortable. He was highly unpredictable and capable of doing almost anything without much notice.
Mit Keyes ging es nicht nur darum, Homoside, Mord, sexuelle Angriffe zu machen. Er war beteiligt in vielen anderen Krimis. Wie hast du das Haus gekauft?
Sie haben das Haus zerstört. Sie haben dann unterschiedliche Sachen verwendet, die anders Feuer erzeugen würden. Sie haben bestimmte Fenster geöffnet, um sicherzustellen, dass das Haus von Feuer verwendet wurde.
Der Grund dafür, dass er diesen Feuer aufgebaut hat, war, dass er alle Behörden in diesem Bereich zu diesem Hausfeuer nehmen würde, all ihre Aufmerksamkeit aufnehmen würde, damit er dann nach Azle, Texas gehen könnte und eine Bankverletzung durchführen würde.
Der Feuer, die Bankverwaltung, all die Aktivitäten, die dazu führen, zeigen, dass er sehr außer Kontrolle war und dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass er jemanden abnimmt und jemanden tötet, noch höher war. Meine Mutter hat mich angerufen.
Die Bankmord, die Israel verursacht hat, war in Azle, Texas. Die Feuerwehr war in Aledo, Texas. Jimmy Tidwell lebte in Mount Enterprise, Texas. Er wurde am Morgen am 15. Februar gesehen. Niemand weiß, wo Israel war am 15. Februar. The disguise that Israel Keys was wearing included a white hard hat and there was long hair hanging out from the hard hat.
What we didn't find was the white hard hat or the hair that he said he taped under it.
Das DNA von dem könnte uns vielleicht an Jimmy Tidwell verbunden haben.
Ich glaube nicht, dass diese genügend detailliert sind, um ein Individuum zu bezeichnen. Ich glaube nicht, dass wir das durchgehen können und sagen, das ist Samantha Koenig und das sind die Couriers. Aber ich glaube, dass er sehr intensiv war, wie viele er gemacht hat. Ich glaube, dass dies Satan und Israel Keys bezeichnet. Und das Abseits-Dauern-Kruzifix ist auf.
Seine 11 Gefühle zeigen, dass das sein ist und diese Geschichten und Geister gehören ihm. und wir möchten einen Namen für jeden davon geben.
Israel hat uns erzählt, dass er sich über andere Serialkiller beschäftigt und studiert hat. So hat er seine Ideen dazu bekommen, wo man jemanden nehmen muss und was man tun muss, um Leute nicht zu töten. Als ich Israel gefragt habe, welche Serialkiller er am meisten zu bezeichnen oder zu emulieren hat, hat er sich meistens zu Ted Bundy bezeichnet.
Viele andere Serialkiller haben einen bestimmten Typ. Bei Keyes war das absolut nicht der Fall. Es gab Männer, Frauen, alt, jung. Das machte ihn in meiner Meinung noch gefährlicher. Denn es geht nicht um die Person. Es geht darum, die perfekte Situation zu finden, um jemanden zu nehmen.
Israel Keyes, hat auf dem Olympischen Peninsula von 2001 bis 2007 gelebt. Als Keyes im Armee war, hat er diese Frau online getroffen.
Sie ist ziemlich schnell verheiratet und er bewegt sich mit ihr in die Native American Community in Mia Bay, Washington.
Mein Verständnis von Israel ist, dass er die Niabe um seine Beziehung und seine Tochter, die geboren werden wird, gezwungen hat. Das ist, wo seine Freundin herkommt und wo sie leben wollte. Und so hat er sie dort gefolgt.
Es war sehr seltsam, dass Keyes so leicht in Neah Bay akzeptiert wurde, die von den Amerikanern populiert ist. Es ist eine Reservation. Seine Akzeptanz in dieser Gemeinschaft war bedeutend für seine Fähigkeit, diese Maske der Sanität zu tragen.
I am getting along with my wife better than I ever have. All you have to do is agree to something that you would never do.
Alle haben ihn gefreut. Er war der beste Co-Arbeiter, der beste Arbeiter, der beste Freund.
Ich habe mir immer gedacht, dass ein mögliches Szenario für ihn wäre, einfach tief in die Wälder oder die Wälder zu gehen, in die Meilen zu gehen und dann aufzusteigen und dann einfach zu warten. Er hat uns gesagt, dass er oft nur einen Knall anzeigen musste. Er hat die Verletzten überzeugt, dass es eine Art Gewalt war und er sie einfach aufbauen musste.
Und sobald er sie aufbauen konnte, war er völlig in Kontrolle. Der Olympischen Peninsular ist sehr rural. Die Olympische Bergfläche läuft durch ihn und die große Mehrheit der Lande ist sowohl Nationalpark als auch Nationalwälder. Ich denke, es sind ein Millionen Hektar, der Park selbst. Es ist ein riesiges Gebiet, sehr hübsche Berge, tiefe, dünne Wälder.
Ich bin sicher, dass der Olympische Nationalpark Teil seines Hunting Grounds war. Es ist etwa eine Drehzeit von Nia Bay.
Mit Samantha und den Couriers hat er Blitz-Attacken genannt, bei denen er nach ihnen ging. Was wir für Washington-State verstanden haben, war, dass er in diese berühmten Bereiche gehen würde und die Gefühle aufwärmen würde.
Wir behandeln jemanden, der viele Menschen getötet hat. Es sind mehrere Familien, die betroffen sind, und wir wissen nicht, wer sie sind. Es gab kleine Dinge, die sich ausdrücken. Aber er hat die Details nicht verbal erfüllt.
Unsere spezifischste Informationen kamen aus einem Buch, das er in seiner Gefängniszelle geschrieben hatte, in dem er über einige seiner Verbrechen geschrieben hat, ohne zu identifizieren, wer diese Menschen waren. Und es gibt ein paar, die er von Washington State geschrieben hat. Und das Buch war ziemlich detailliert darüber, was er zu diesen Individuen getan hat.
Er hat die Frau zuerst verabschiedet und der Mann war noch wach, während er die Frau verabschiedet hat. Es scheint, dass er ihn mit einer Schaufel getroffen hat. Und dann wissen wir, dass sie beide nach ihrem Tod verabschiedet werden. Was er uns über die Städte in Washington-Stadt erzählt, ist, dass sie wenig zu wenig Medien hatten, als sie verschwunden sind.
Israel hatte mehrere Stunden im Garten des Geräts, auf Wartezeit, um zum Gerät zu gehen. Die Beine, wie auch die Handzüge, sind mit einer Kante verbunden. Er wusste, warum eine der Kanten sehr leise war. Er sass dort für Stunden und wackelte das Stück Metall, bis es sich von dem Bein-Iron freigab.
In 2007 endete Keys Beziehung zu einer Frau in Neah Bay und er beschloss sich, in Anchorage zurückzukehren, weil es da immer noch ein sehr remote Gefühl gibt.
Seine Freundin hat ein paar Probleme. Er sagt, dass er weggeht. Er will nach Alaska. Er will die Tochter nehmen. Und er endet mit der vollen Behandlung der Frau.
Dann nahm er ein Stück Cellophane, in dem sein Sandwich enthalten war, und machte einen Strang daraus. Das Cellophane brach, sodass seine Beine drei Füße entfernt waren, statt 16 Inch. The next day I interviewed Israel. I said, seriously, do you really think you were going to escape? And he said, if I had a 1% chance of escaping, what did I have to lose? Really?
November 2012 scheint es ein Routine-Meeting mit Israel zu sein.
Aber am Ende dieses Interviews zeigt er, dass einer der Böden, die er hier in Washington-Stadt versammelt hat, Lake Crescent ist.
Es geht über 600 Meter tief.
Wie viele Milchkabinen? Vier oder fünf für den Tank. Nur für einen?
Er gab uns eine vage Beschreibung, wo der Körper gesunken war, aber nichts, was wir folgen konnten. Ein riesiges Maß an Wasser. Unpraktisch, um eine Suche ohne mehr spezifische Informationen zu machen.
Am 2. Dezember 2012 war ich auf einer SWAT-Operation und wir hatten gerade ein Zuhause auf einem barrikaden Objekt eingefahren und wir haben diesen Individuen in die Gefängnis genommen, als ich von einem Teammitglied auf die Schulter getappt wurde und gesagt wurde, mit dem Kommandeur zu sprechen.
Ich bekam eine Telefonnachricht von Jolene und ich wusste, von dem Zeitpunkt an, als sie mich angerufen hat, war es keine positive Nachricht.
Und dann hat er mir gesagt, dass Israel Keyes tot war. Ich fuhr ins Gefängnis. Ich habe Jolene kennengelernt und wir sind in Israels Gefängnis gegangen. Ich habe ihn vor mir gesehen, auf der Mattrasse. Da war ein Fluss Blut aus seinem Bett.
Er versuchte, in mehreren Wegen zu verurteilen. Er hat seine Rippen sehr tief mit einem Rasierer geschnitten. Er hat auch eine Nusse gefashioniert, also etwas um seinen Nacken, mit einem Kühlschrank.
Er legte den Schlauch über seinen Fuß und drückte ihn auf den Bein, um die Kraft um seine Nase zu erzeugen, um sich zu bewegen. Keyes konnte einen Rasierer schälen.
Er hatte einen kleinen, silbernen Stoff, den er in den Rasierer zurückgeben konnte, damit es so aussieht, als ob der Schwanz da war. Und das wurde dem Verwaltungsbeamten zurückgegeben.
I was extremely upset wondering how something like that had happened. And I was upset with the Department of Corrections at first and then obviously Israel.
I hate the fact that Keyes had his final word in his suicide. That was under his control, not ours.
Federal Inmate Israel Keys was found dead in his jail cell of an apparent suicide. We don't have a federal prison here. So we pay the State Department of Corrections to house them. First of all, you know, they're under custody. Initial dachte ich, es gäbe Möglichkeiten, die Situation in diesem Fall zu manipulieren.
Als ich wusste, was nach diesem Statement passiert ist, hörte ich, ob er etwas gesagt hätte, was uns gesagt hätte, dass er sich töten würde und dass es kein weiteres Interview geben würde. Im Hintergrund fühlte ich mich, als ich ihn nach dem Gefängnis zurückgezogen habe und darüber gesprochen habe, was wir im nächsten Interview darüber sprechen werden, Er sagte, ja, klar.
Und dann gab er seinen seltsamen Lächeln. Das macht mich jetzt denken, dass er einen Plan hatte, weil er wusste, dass er nicht im nächsten Interview sein wird. Es fühlte sich wie ein Schlag in den Mund.
Ich würde sagen, viele Leute waren froh, dass er tot war. Sie denken, das ist, was er verdient hat. Aber es gibt ein bisschen Rekognition davon, dass er viel Informationen mit ihm genommen hat.
Ich glaube, er hatte eine Erfolgsplanung, eine Vision in seinem Kopf, wie er über den Topf jeder Schuhe zu der Tür fliegt und fliegt. Ich hatte Angst, dass ich wegkomme. Du hattest immer auf deinen Beinen, weil er sehr gefährlich war.
Ich will die Gefühle definitiv nicht verlieren. Das ist die echte Geschichte, dass das normale, alltägliche Menschen waren. Und es war wirklich nur ein Zwischenzeitpunkt, als sie mit den Schlüsseln über die Straße kamen. Und leider führte es zu ihrem Tod.
Wir überprüfen immer noch die Beweise. Wir bekommen auch immer wieder Beispiele. Leider haben wir noch keine anderen Fälle von seinem Verbrechen gelöst.
Ich glaube, wir können andere Verbrecher identifizieren. Es braucht nur genug Augenbrauen und Sonnenlicht und Druck. Und das kann passieren.
Er hat Samantha Koenig verurteilt. Wir haben die Karriere verurteilt. Aber anders als Samantha haben wir ihre Körper für ihre Familie nicht zurückgebracht. Es ist ziemlich offensichtlich, dass das nicht zu isolierend war.
Während unserer Interviews mit Israel Keys hat er uns gezeigt, dass es mehr Verbrecher gab. Und er sagte speziell, weniger als zwölf.
Wir hatten noch viel Arbeit zu tun, um alle Krämpfe, die er verursacht hatte, zu lösen.
Als wir die Computers von Keys Haus besiegt haben, haben wir sie forensisch überprüft, um zu sehen, was er suchte. Was waren die wichtigen Suchbegriffe, die er suchte?
Auf seinem Computer hat er die Name von Deborah Feldman gesucht. Sie ist von Hackensack, New Jersey, am 8. April 2009 weggeflogen.
Ich würde sagen, sie hat ein bisschen eine scharfe Leidenschaft gelebt.
There was very little information in the news, if any, about Debra's disappearance. So to have keys all the way across the country, trying to get information about her missing person case, that was a huge indicator to us that he maybe had something to do or was responsible for Debra's disappearance.
So we put the picture of Debra Feldman in front of him. We all left the room. And then we went to the observation room. And then we watched him look at the photo. And he had a clear reaction to it.
It was a pretty significant change in demeanor. And his response was essentially, I don't want to talk about this one yet.
Alles ist ein Power-Zweck. Und Keyes' Hauptpriorität ist, den Tod zu bekommen und es schnell zu bekommen.
Als Keyes lernte, dass wir nicht so in Kontrolle waren, wann er den Todspenalten bekommen könnte, wie er es zuerst dachte, habe ich gedacht, dass das der Ort war, wo er sich ein bisschen mehr aufsteigen konnte.
Wenn du denkst, dass ich nicht da bin, wenn du denkst, dass wir das hier nicht aufsteigen können, I don't know who stole it. Somebody stole it.
He tried to take control over more of the interviews and really controlled when he would give us information and how much information he would give us.
It's like little bargaining chips, whatever you want to call it. The prosecution was hoping to use a death penalty to their advantage in getting additional information from him.
Die Bewerbungsgruppe hat die Gelegenheit gebraucht, um andere Mörder und Verbrechen von Keyes zu lösen. Können wir ihn weiterhelfen und herausfinden, was er getan hat?
Während Keyes im Anker-Korrektions-Komplex verurteilt wurde, haben die Anker-Korrektions-Offiziere eine Suche nach seinem Schlafzimmer gemacht. Unterhalb seines Schlafzimmers haben sie zwölf Bilder gefunden,
Es gab 11 Kräfte, ein Pentagramm mit einem Gürtel drauf. Und eines der Schriftstücke sagte, dass wir eins sind.
Sie wurden mit einem Finger in Blut gedreht.
Dies sind die Schriften, die in Israel Keyes' Gefängniszimmer entdeckt wurden, von der Korrektionsabteilung. Er musste einen Schmerz verursachen, ob er sich in den Nase geschlagen hat, um so viel Blut zu erzeugen.
Das war für uns wichtig, weil wir niemals Keyes zu sagen konnten, wie viele Menschen er getötet hat.
So this one here I think is significant because it's the one that has, we are one written on it. Which again I believe signifies that he believes that all of these victims and all of these people, their stories and their soul belong to him. They know that there's potentially up to 10 or 11 victims. So there's 7 or 8 that we don't know where they're at.
Als wir die 11 Verbrechen bemerkten, hat er uns nie korrigiert.
Das gab uns zumindest ein Ziel, diese 11 Verbrechen zu suchen. Können wir ihn in einem bestimmten Ort für einen Zeitraum befinden und versuchen, die Missing People in dem Bereich herauszufinden, in dem er damals reist? Irgendwo von Alaska bis zum Ostkosten.
New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, das ist fast der ganze Ostkosten. Westen gehen wir bis nach L.A.
Er hat in seinen Interviews darüber gesprochen, wie er das Smartphone aus der Batterie aus dem Smartphone nehmen würde, damit er während der Zeit nicht getrackt werden würde. Wir versuchen, so viele Rekorde wie möglich über Keyes zu sammeln, ob es um die Familie ging oder ob er mit seiner Freundin reisen würde, wo er diese Stärke hatte.
Am Anfang von 2012 geht er auf zwei separate Reisen nach Texas. Der erste ist, nachdem er Samantha getötet hat, als er seine Familie aus New Orleans auf einen Kurs führte.
Als sie von dem Kurs zurückkehrten, flog Israels Freundin zurück nach Anchorage. Israel und seine Tochter fuhren nach dem Dallas-Fort Worth-Bereich, um seine Mutter Heidi zu besuchen.
Der zweite Texas-Trip ist, nachdem Keyes durch den Südwesten gefahren ist, und dann ist Keyes auf seinem zweiten Texas-Trip verhaftet.
Es war sehr möglich, dass Dinge in Texas geschehen wären. In der Suche nach dem Kordfokus haben wir drei Rollen Geld gefunden. In der Tür des Fahrers They were musty and appeared to have dye on them.
So I put out another special bulletin about unsolved bank robberies during the time period that Israel was in Texas. I got a call from a task force officer in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And he said there was a robbery in Azle, Texas on February the 16th. Der Bankrubber-Suspekt hatte einen weißen Hartz-Hat. Er hatte lange, schwarze Haare, die von unten aus dem Hartz-Hat kamen.
Ich wusste sofort, dass das Israel Keys war. Nur seine Stärke, die Waffe, die er hielt, sah aus wie eine Waffe, die wir von seinem Fahrzeug besiegt hatten. Die Jacket, die er anhatte.
Seine Beschreibung seiner Reise nach Texas war schrecklich, denn er beschrieb die Eskalation-Kriege zu einem viel höheren Niveau.
Heidi hat uns erzählt, dass Israel seit zwei oder drei Tagen verschwunden ist. Seine Tochter stand in seiner Mütterhaus. Sie konnten ihn weder per Text noch per Telefon erreichen. Von Februar 14. bis Februar 16. war er off the grid. Er hat gesagt, dass er auch außer Kontrolle war.
Ja, er hat das gesagt. Er hat 2.847 Meilen auf sein Fahrzeug gelegt.
Aber es ist etwas anderes geworden. Er springt aus seinem Seil und springt über die Barriere, die ihn von dem Rest der Galerie entfernt.
Wir mussten entscheiden, ob sich jemand in Texas verletzt hatte, während dieser Zeit. Und es war eine Person in Texas, die verschwindet ist. Und das Name war Jimmy Tidwell aus Mount Enterprise, Texas.
If you break it down and look at what the evidence truly is, I don't feel like it would support a conviction if he was tried today.
Chandler was going around to neighbors. He would see that they had ring cameras or some type of security cameras on the outside of their homes. So he was going and asking them, you know, if they had reviewed the video footage.
He was asking questions such as, can you see the road? Can you see vehicles drive by? He's out trying to figure out if anything was seen on the outside of his home at that point, from when his parents went missing.
One household actually told him that police had already collected the video.
He was asking if everything was okay. He was asking why there were so many police in his neighborhood.
And I had to explain to him, you know, we were canvassing the neighborhood.
One of the residents at the farm said that Chandler had come over to the house on July 5th with a vehicle and backed it up against some wooded property and saw him walking from the wooded area and found that to be unusual.
One of the detectives noticed what he believed to be turkey vultures flying around over the wooded portion.
Turkey vultures are large birds that feed off typically dead animals. They're scavengers. What does that trigger in your mind? He said that from his past professional experience, it kind of indicates that, you know, there's something dead in the area.
Yes. So the detective ended up walking the path that he believed that Chandler was on.
It was determined that the individual was shot, dismembered after they were killed.
I mean, things at that point really changed for everybody in the case.
So tell me about what's happening here. We just wanted to hear her side of the story as she's the one that was closest to Chandler.
He was supposed to be there swimming in the family pool because he needed to swim for some therapy he needed to do. He was not swimming. She saw him coming from the wooded area and found that to be unusual.
I think that she's telling an accurate story there, talking to friends and family members. No one would want to hurt the Heldersons.
How are you doing? So the way we wanted to interview him initially was to have him lay out the story of what he was telling us from the first night.
So at that point, after we let him tell his entire story, we confront him and say that we know more than what he believes. We told him to come clean, basically not using those words, and we told him to tell us the truth.
Yes. This second time with the search warrant, we have crime scene investigators that are in the home going through everything. We're in the basement. What did you find down here? Down here, we found traces of blood on both sides of the basement.
I don't really have words for it, to be honest. I just don't know how somebody could do that to somebody else.
The first thing that really stood out in my mind is when Detective Henderson told Chandler that his parents are no longer with us.
There wasn't the huge shock reaction that I believe most people would display.
Yeah, Chandler was charged with providing false information in a missing persons case. He was telling us that his parents had gone to a cabin up north, when in all reality, we found that his parents didn't go anywhere at all.
It was determined that the individual was shot, dismembered after they were killed, and was positively identified as Bart Halderson.
It confirmed our suspicions of who it was. But now we had more evidence that we could charge Chandler with the homicide.
A big question remained in our mind. Where is Krista Helderson?
No. I mean, we did not believe that she would have anything to do with it. Of course, as time is going on and days are passing, we're learning more information about their whereabouts. We had surveillance video we were reviewing, trying to get a timeline from July 1 to July 7. And so what we were learning did not suggest that Krista had any involvement at all.
She had her cell phone back and had found something in her cell phone that she wanted to provide to us.
A big question remained in our mind. Where's Krista Hilderson?
Is there something you want to tell us right away? She comes to the realization that she didn't tell us everything and that she had something on her phone that could be helpful and valuable to finding the Hallersons. And it wasn't something that she intentionally withheld from us.
Tell me what you find on Kat's cell phone. During the review of Kat's cell phone, we found numerous clues and treasures that I don't even know she knew she had. We found all of their message history, and we also found a screenshot of a Snapchat location that she had had.
They had a time in their relationship where he had cheated on her. She had his location services on for Snapchat. It was an agreement they had. She wanted to be able to know his whereabouts.
Pretty early on, once we started looking at her phone and finding out other information about Chandler, but there were, you know, different investigators in the command post that had different theories. You know, was she in the circle? Was she out of the circle? And we just had to do our job and let the evidence lead us to the conclusion, and she was not involved whatsoever.
Why do you think she was so eager to offer all this information? I think because she wanted to clear herself.
She had left Chandler's house that morning on Saturday, and he was supposed to go to do some chores. And then she later looked at his location and saw that he was up by the Wisconsin River.
She didn't know why he was there. So she started questioning him about his location and what he was doing there.
When we were in the house the first night on July 7th, Chandler did walk us around after we interviewed him and showed us what he wanted us to see around the home.
There was a glass panel that was broken out in the fireplace and he had disclosed that to deputies and to us the first night we were in there and explained it that he was playing ball with one of the dogs and the dogs broke the glass fireplace. And so that was his story.
It could mean that Chandler had cut his toe near the fireplace, but it wouldn't explain why Bart and Krista's blood would be in the same area.
During the search warrant, we did find two cell phones and Barton Krista's driver's licenses wrapped in tinfoil and a shoe in the garage. What does that tell you? That told us that Barton Krista didn't go anywhere. And how does that poke holes in what Chandler told you?
Chandler had told us that he was messaging back and forth with his mother, Krista, on Sunday, and that Krista was messaging him that they made it and that they were going to be watching the fireworks and the parade. We found that that was not true.
I think Chandler thought that would protect them from cell phone towers.
So in Chandler's bedroom, we actually located a case of approximately 480 SKS rifle rounds.
Down here, we found traces of blood on both sides of the basement. We had the shell casing that we had located over here. There was some other blood evidence on different items down here.
The rifle was recovered at the farm in Cottage Grove.
The picture that we were seeing at that point is that Chandler had murdered Barton Christa Helderson in the home and went through extensive work to dispose of their bodies.
What was the reason for it? All in all, they were a loving family from what we were told by everybody.
We had sent a detective up to the Wisconsin River area. One of the neighbors happened to come over to that detective and tell him that she had seen a stranger suspect male in that area the week prior. We arranged for a larger team of detectives to go up to the area, and we wanted to do a land search of that property.
What's going through your mind? We were hopeful that we would find something.
In close proximity to each other, there were dismembered body parts.
It's just so graphic. I don't really have words for it, to be honest.
I just don't know how somebody could do that to somebody else, especially if it's their parents, right? We go to homicides all the time. We go to murders all the time. And a lot of that stuff is in the heat of the moment. This is just a whole other level of emotion.
From what we were told by everybody, all in all, they were a loving family. What was the reason for it?
Chandler was looping Bart in on some of these emails with Madison College, just trying to show Bart that this is why I'm not getting my transcripts. But the problem is, according to detectives, they're fake too.
No. Chandler had made up fake emails with fake school employees to email back and forth about the transcript issue.
Not long after that, Chandler asked his mom to stop at the gas station and pick up soda.
So we found video footage from one of the neighbors that actually watched the backside of the house. And through a forensic analysis of that video, our examiner was able to determine that the glow in certain windows of this home was indeed the fireplace.
What's going on in the household? You know, what aren't we discovering?
Yeah, just to ask more follow-up questions and trying to get the timeline of events. His parents left around 5 AM, basically left without a peep.
No, we were learning from friends and family that that's completely out of character for them to not tell people where they were going.
He mentioned they were maybe going to a casino to go gambling. We learned that it's out of character for them to go gambling and that the Haldersons, especially Bart, was pretty frugal with his money.
We were looking for a van. It was an unknown vehicle, and then we saw it on surveillance camera.
I think at that point we decided we needed to send a team up to the cabin.
And just to put the icing on the cake of this picture of domesticity, the street they lived on was Strawberry Lane.
They open up their marriage, meaning other couples have come into the bedroom.
You see a guy on security footage, you're going to get excited. Who else could it be? It seems so promising.
Sabrina and her family and the detectives aren't the only people desperate for answers. The people at BNSF Railroad also want to help.
Once detectives speak with Mr. Hearn, they are suddenly led down a whole new investigative path.
About three weeks after Robert was murdered, police got a game-changing phone call from Robert's good friend, Jason Bernatty. It really changes the face of everything.
Jonathan Hearn really did have a natural instinct to draw people in. He's a first responder. He took care of elderly ladies and he would make them feel okay and everything's fine.
Then shortly after the voicemail, Jason Bernatine has something new to turn over to cops, and that's the strangest of letters from Jonathan Hearn.
Detectives are blasting through this new lead with Jonathan Hearn, and they learn all kinds of things.
They start talking. It's flirtatious. They exchange phone numbers. They have a couple of get togethers. But it starts to develop an emotional component.
Jonathan's showing up a lot in Sabrina's home. He's bringing flowers, but bringing his sister with him.
But what's really bizarre is that Jonathan is trying so desperately to get himself inside this group, this wolf pack. He is really trying so hard to get in there and be a part of this group so he can be near Sabrina. Why is he doing this? Why not just keep the affair going secretly?
Jonathan Hearn has a Yamaha motorcycle that seems a lot like the one you see in the footage.
The family life for the Lamones was brilliant. It was loving. Sabrina devoted her life to her children. That was her number one priority, and she was, by choice, a stay-at-home mom. Robert was really hardworking, reliable. They were also a family that liked to have fun. They had a lot of friends.
It's been three years since Robert Limon was brutally gunned down at his place of work. Now, his own wife, she goes up against one major witness, the man she once loved, the man she swore she wanted a future with.
Deputy District Attorney Eric Smith tells the jury that the motive for this murder was love and money.
Jonathan says she places the container in his lunch bag and sends him off to work. But then she panics and she chickens out.
Jonathan actually crafted his own silencer, and he made it out of a large flashlight that he somehow attached to his weapon.
Jonathan begins ransacking the office in this attempt to make it look like a robbery gone bad. He rifles through some drawers. He throws some papers around. He steals the laptop that's on the desk. He turns around to leave, and guess what? He thought he had heard some sort of gurgling sounds from Robert Lamone.
Rob and Sabrina, they seemed very happy. They were always calling each other, sweet little names, always kissing each other, laughing a lot.
Among this wolf pack is a couple, Jason and Kelly Bernatine. They were particularly close to Sabrina and Robert. Jason was a firefighter and Kelly was a hairstylist. In fact, that's how she met Sabrina.
So between 2000 and 2008, it's a pretty steady marriage. Great family life, great social life, everything going well. But in 2008, Something starts happening in this relationship.
The jury did not buy that she had anything to do with that, clearly. But then it makes you wonder then, on what grounds did they think she had something to do with this ultimate murder?
On February 21 of 2018, now going into four years since her husband was brutally gunned down, Sabrina Limon hears her fate.
Robert was known as a rapid responder. He would fill in for other people who needed some time off at the last second.
for a whodunit that's boiling underneath. This investigation takes cops down a very unusual road that involves God and David and Bathsheba and murder.
Some say it was Sabrina's idea. Others say Rob was into it. Unless we were flies on the wall in the bedroom, we won't know for sure.
Robert was due to get off at 7 in the evening and return home to his wife and kids.
Around 7 PM, Rob's replacement shows up to take over the shift. Immediately he sees things don't seem right.
Do you know what happens the night after...
I don't know. Do you want to stay in the hospital?
When Morgan said to you that if we don't do this for Slender, our families and loved ones are going to be killed, do you honestly believe that?
Anissa Weier's parents arrive at the police station too.
Your parents know that you're here talking to me, okay? And they're so glad that you're safe. We were scared for you guys.
You guys have been playing this a while?
So why did you pick Peyton?
It didn't take long for them to look at phone records.
It was ingenious, but he even took it a step further. He would be smoking small cigars as they talked so that she wouldn't get suspicious. He would make it a point to flick ashes on or into the can as they were talking.
Investigators from Polk and Hillsborough counties announced a discovery tonight.
By the time we presented it to the grand jury, she had provided the murder weapon, the bodies behind one of her houses.
Dee Dee Moore was indicted for first-degree murder, premeditated murder of Abraham Shakespeare.
The public's interest in this case was incredible.
She conducted a sophisticated campaign to conceal his death by making up stories, by sending text messages.
The body's on property she owns. The murder happened in her house and with her gun. She admitted she bought the lime that was poured over the body of Abraham Shakespeare.
When Greg Smith read the letter that Dee Dee Moore had composed in the motel room, jurors were on the edge of their seat.
Did Ms. Moore address who to blame if you got caught?
Ronald is nothing but a fictional character, a character that she created out of her imagination.
Gregory Smith has never been a suspect in this murder.
And then all of a sudden, the entire investigation shifted.
And then all of a sudden, the entire investigation shifted.
Well, we called the manufacturers of just about every minivan that was, you know, looked similar.
We're calling every single person that owned one of these vans that is registered to. Everybody has an alibi. Nobody's in Atlanta, nobody's in Dunwoody.
Why would a late 50s executive wake up one day and kill somebody? Put a wig on and gun somebody down in a parking lot?
I see dead people. They're telling me to kill people.
You can only imagine our surprise, you know, when we have the paperwork from Enterprise and Google your name in. You're her boss.
There's a person that just comes out of nowhere and shoots him several times.
Yeah. Jan was able to connect the dots because we could show that it looks like he committed the murder, but we didn't have a murder weapon. Can you tell us where you actually listed the gun? It was a website.
It's the most intense case I've ever been involved with, and I've tried high-profile cases.
Hemi was broke. All those things came out in his interrogation. He was unhappy in his relationship with his wife.
There are essentially two ways you can be acquitted if you commit a crime and you claim that you're insane. One way is what we call the right from wrong test, that you were so far gone that you don't understand the difference between right and wrong. The other way, which was the centerpiece of this trial, is that you were suffering from a delusion that compelled you to do the act.
He wanted Rusty's life, and he wanted Rusty's wife. He wanted the money because they're wealthy, The house was paid for. I think the house at the time was worth almost a million dollars.
Yes. Yeah. We had to because we had to establish motive. How does she come across to the jury? Not like a grieving widow. Dishonest, disingenuous, a liar.
Either the angel and the demon were talking to Hemi and telling Hemi to kill Rusty, or the demon that he was cheating with.
Yes. Our theories were very, very close. They were saying she led him all the way up to it, but didn't necessarily plan it. And we were saying, yeah, she was the motive for it, but we believe she perhaps had something to do with it as well. Hemi denied his crime from Andrea because Andrea already knew it. As soon as this murder had taken place, she called Hemi Newman.
She calls Hemi multiple times. On her way to the hospital, we thought that that was extremely odd behavior. She told everybody that would listen that Rusty's been shot, but yet she wasn't told until she got to that hospital two hours later. The only way she would know that is if he told her.
Rusty deserved it. to be treated with some respect and dignity. He did not deserve to be shot down in the street like some stray dog.
They would have us believe that he's insane because he's having a good time at the club. And Andrea's doing this dance for him and she's, you know, and they're groping and they're grinding and they're getting it on and they're kissing and hugging. He's having an affair. He's about to go back to the room and do the horizontal mumbo. What man in America wouldn't be like, oh, I'm about to have sex.
It's great. Of course he's having a good time. If that makes him insane, then half the men walking down the street are insane. Nobody is insane that plans a murder this way in the cover up. He knew he was wrong. And that makes him guilty. That makes him guilty. That makes him guilty all day, every day. Because he is sane, and he knew the difference between right and wrong.
He talked about himself. It was sort of all about him. Kind of felt like, you know, woe is me, I'm sorry I got caught.
In layman's terms, if you help, you can be charged like the person that did it.
You hit her with an array of charges. Correct. We charged her with murder, obstruction, false statements, perjury.
Yeah. I have some very strong circumstantial evidence, right? She's calling the murderer who she happens to be having an affair with moments after she finds out that her husband is shot. And then the night before the murder, there was a search on the computer for death benefits.
The question is, do we have enough evidence that we can go from she probably had something to do with it to she did have something to do with it?
I'm standing before the court, standing before millions of people perhaps, asking for the court to dismiss a case right before trial.
I believe that it would be unjust and unethical to go forward on a charge that I am not 100% sure someone is guilty of.
It doesn't happen very often. If you say that the prosecutor is a minister of justice, then you have to own that. It's not what you know, quite frankly. It's what you can prove.
Across the board, we believe that she lied to police and she lied on the stand.
She blamed it on him and she was the victim. She's not a victim.
For the team ready to conquer the grandest stage, immortality awaits. Moments of sweat and sacrifice forge the composition of champions. An unforgettable journey is nearing its finale. Four more wins to take home the trophy. The NBA Finals, presented by YouTube TV, begin June 5th on ABC.
Yes. Once you have served out your sentence, probation included, then your sins, your crimes are erased from the record. And she wasn't given special treatment. She just wasn't treated any worse than anyone else.
I talked to the board and I explained to them, you don't have anything but $31 in a frozen bank account. There's no records of anything as to where this money went. It's all spent.
And there was purchases to TJ Maxx, purchases to Olive Garden. And then when I started adding it up, I'm like, $32,000 in one night you raise for two sports teams, and it all just disappears. I mean, there's no way to rectify that.
She was selling a bunch of things and items at her house.
The question was still out there of whether she was sitting on a pile of money. All these different questions.
Okay. had there been something there that shouldn't have been there, would have turned it over to law enforcement. She's all smiles and looking at him and trying to be polite. And as soon as he turns his back, she changes her look, like her whole demeanor changes.
Natalie would deposit from their company and then sift it back out in various different ways.
The League never recouped any money. It was all just lost.
10 o'clock comes and goes and there's no acknowledgement that the deadline imposed by the author of the ransom note has come and gone.
Check the house, top to bottom. Look for anything that might belong to Jean Bonnet that is in place where it shouldn't be.
I wanted to lessen his anxiety by giving him a job to do, a task, a meaningless task.
And I see John Ramsey carrying JonBenet up the last three steps from the basement. She looked like she was sleeping. She had some marks on her face and on her neck. I knelt next to her, and I leaned down to her face. And John leaned down opposite, and he asked if she was dead. And I said, yes, she's dead. And as we looked at each other, I remember, and I wore a shoulder holster.
tucking my gun right next to me and consciously counting, I've got 18 bullets. Why did you do that? Because I didn't know if we'd all be alive when people showed up.
Did you hear anything yesterday? I think there are some new developments.
My name is Jonathan Webb. I was a grand juror on the JonBenet Ramsey case. It bothers me that the murder of a little girl like this has gone on unsolved for essentially a quarter century.
From a crime scene perspective, it was very disturbing how she was found. She's on a concrete floor, a grout around her neck, and she's six years old. That's pretty horrible.
We heard from three handwriting experts. And even though the handwriting experts couldn't definitively say that she wrote it, they all three came to the same conclusion that it could have been Patsy Ramsey.
The intruder theory didn't make sense to the grand jury. the Boulder police had photographed cobwebs. So for someone to get through a small opening like that and not disturbing a cobweb would be remarkable.
We were troubled by to what level of confidence do we need to have to vote to indict? And it's the preponderance of the evidence, which means greater than 50%. And soon after that, we voted to indict.
Did you ask him, like, why would anything ever happen to you? Was that an odd statement that he had made?
Underneath the white rocks was some thin wood paneling. As soon as they removed the paneling, I could smell the odor of a decomposing body. It was what appeared to be a small body tightly wrapped in black plastic covered in duct tape.
There was a melted green bucket. It appeared that the burnt flesh had been placed in. Under the bucket was a partial human skull.
So it makes it harder on family life. In Becky and Robbie's situation, they were building on experiences in previous marriages they had been involved in, knowing what they wanted and what they didn't want.
Turns out Robbie put some of his concerns on paper in a nine-page letter he wrote to Becky a couple of months before they planned to get married.
In that letter, in his own handwriting, he's saying there was a problem.
can't remember the last time you approached me to hug or kiss me i wish i could put that smile back on your face and make you look happy you brought me out of the darkness and made life worth living i wish i had the money to take you everywhere you want to go i want to get the house all fixed up to something you like i want you to have friends and i swear i will not accuse you of cheating on me ever again i never want to lose you why was rob so concerned that you would cheat on him
Had you ever cheated on your previous husbands? No. No. Never.
Becky's sister Mandy tells me that when it comes to love, they both tend to make miscalculations.
Like the mistakes have been because you've loved people.
But in May of 2018, Mandy quickly fell for a charismatic stranger named Larry Richmond Sr. Tell me the story of how you met Larry.
What was your impression of Larry when you had dinner with him?
Did you communicate with Larry Sr. outside of these double dates?
How quickly into dating him did you know that Larry had spent nearly two decades in prison for murder? He told me immediately. Immediately.
While Larry seemed to play down his crime to Mandy, in reality, he had pleaded guilty to knowingly killing another person.
Meanwhile, it has been six days since Robbie was gunned down. The family, Becky, Mandy, Larry, and large numbers of the community are now gathered to lay Robbie to rest.
The service today in no way fully be right or have the fullest length of time and respect to honor Robbie.
Then in a dramatic turn, just minutes after they pay their final respects to Robbie, police move in on two leads. So Larry was arrested when you came back from the funeral.
Can you describe to me the night of that shooting?
But a discovery by the police turns this day from somber to suspect. So you're pulling into the house after the funeral. Right. Lights and sirens, guns out. Dogs barking. You're getting cuffed and taken in. That must have been terrifying. It was.
Police pulled Mandy and Larry over for a traffic violation, but there's more to the story.
So when they looked at the employees at that pawn shop, they realized that Larry Richmond Jr. was an employee there. They put two and two together that Larry Richmond Jr. was Larry Richmond Sr. 's son.
Larry Richmond Jr. is a 23-year-old Evansville native. As a child, his time with his father was limited to prison visits, and now after years of being apart, Jr. and Sr. are reconnecting.
So Larry Jr. is associated with a gun we think might be the murder weapon. That's a big step in the investigation.
Larry Richmond Sr. was taken in at the same time as Mandy, in the same time that Larry Richmond Jr. was.
So he understands what you should and shouldn't do when you get arrested by the police. So he's going to say, no, I want the lawyer. And there's nothing wrong with that.
With police unable to further question Larry Sr., they talk to his fiancee, Mandy. Her brother-in-law, Robbie, is the victim.
When the police pulled over Mandy and Larry Sr. earlier, they had found a gun hidden in the car. Now, it wasn't the murder weapon, but because of Larry's prior conviction, he's not allowed to possess a firearm.
So you pretty quickly understand that Larry is now a suspect.
When they started to bring up this idea that Larry Richmond Sr. may have been involved, I think that was a situation for her that was very eye-opening and one of confusion because she knew about Larry's past and she knew that he was trying to become a better person, at least that's what he was expressing to her.
Mandy is clearly in shock, but she's insistent that her fiance is not involved in Robbie's death.
Amanda Fillmore was never a suspect, and police spoke with her. They found her to be telling the truth about almost every detail of her life, including intimate details with her and Larry Richmond Sr. and their relationship.
At this point, they had started connecting the dots that at least alluded to Larry Richmond Sr. and Larry Richmond Jr. 's involvement with respect to the stolen firearm.
We have two more people down here now involved in this case. and one is your dad.
I've talked to the regional manager. I've talked to the ATF guys. That's not exactly the way it's going now. The gun came up missing while you were employed.
So Larry Jr. is there when it's missing, and so now you know he's involved in this somehow.
I got some bad news for you, son. I think you're heading down the same path your dad's heading.
Four detectives, nothing is adding up. So they make a drastic move and descend upon the Durer family while they're saying their final goodbyes. So you watch as those four detectives take Becky away for questioning.
At the funeral, police decided to question you again to pull you out?
Becky arrives at the Evansville Police Department. Larry Richmond Sr., his son Larry Richmond Jr., and her sister Mandy are already there.
So basically, I want you to kind of take care of yourself, take care of your family, and then bring it here and go back and just hash through everything, every detail. Okay?
You really want to know about her life and their lives together. What time did she expect him home? Okay, what did you do that day? Who called you that day? Who did you speak to? What kind of phone calls did they ask you about?
Well, the one we'd be interested, obviously, is the one right before your husband was shot and killed, right? If you were in our shoes?
OK. And that's this number here. Do we know who this number is right here?
There's a reason why detectives are so focused on Becky's phone activity. When they collected her cell phone originally, nothing looked suspicious, but they just received the raw data from her cell phone carrier.
when you start looking at the extraction data. You're starting to see that maybe what we can't see with the naked eye is still there under the surface. One element that we saw that raised a lot of eyebrows was a deleted phone call from a contact known as Larry Ali. About 15 minutes before the 911 call that Robbie had been shot.
I've been honest with you from the get go. That's all I ask of you is your honesty.
Elizabeth Fox Doerr, also known as Becky, is married to 51-year-old Robbie Doerr. He's a respected veteran firefighter. He's been at the Evansville, Indiana Fire Department for 28 years, works out of Station One.
I don't. They had information that she didn't have. And so at this point they're asking her questions that they know the answers to.
Becky, don't get yourself into something now. You can't get yourself out of the police.
Okay, so take a deep breath and tell us who you talked to five minutes before your husband was killed in your driveway getting out of his truck in the back of the head. Because I'm telling you, the federal investigation, the FBI, we are looking into this as a federal crime.
They keep pressing her, and finally, after 90 minutes of questioning, she comes clean.
So who did you talk to five minutes before your husband was gunned down in the driveway? Becky, we know the answer. So who was it? My sister's fiancé.
The contact, Larry Ali, would later find out is Larry Richmond Sr. Wait a second here.
You spoke to Larry Sr. and he just got out of jail 11 months ago for murder. And now your husband's dead. I mean, if you're not chasing that pathway, you're not doing your job. It's as simple as that.
So what did you talk to him about? And do not lie because we know his history. We know everything about him.
You didn't even tell us about the conversation. We had to get to this point.
She wasn't being forthcoming, especially for someone that just lost their husband who would want the killer to be brought in and justice to be found.
For Becky, I think nobody can prepare themselves to be accused of something they know they didn't do.
Three minutes later, it puts five bullets in the back of your husband?
Come on! You understand why police were a little bit concerned when they saw that you had a call from a felon who had murdered somebody else and had just gotten out of prison for it. And that call had happened minutes before your husband was gunned down in your driveway.
And as soon as you got off the call with Larry Sr., you erased that call?
The body camera footage from the scene is unfolding in real time, and it's particularly raw and graphic.
I don't think it does. I've never heard that before.
Is that a normal thing around here that people delete phone calls and messages?
Why hold a conversation back from us? It was simply about a sense of life. When this young man asked you how many times, any more phone calls, any more phone calls.
I think Becky's motive behind denying the call was to protect not only herself but her family. And more importantly, to protect the relationship that she adored with Robbie.
The truth is, I didn't ask or tell or request anything in the first place. Did I know someone was going to hurt me? Did I want it to happen or not?
After hours of interrogation, detectives say they can't find much else that connects Becky and Larry Sr. to the crime other than that deleted phone call. But back home, a mysterious message awaits.
He's starting compressions now. Stay with me, stay with me. Heart's still pumping. Some of Robbie's fellow firefighters arrive at the scene, and they're unaware of what they're walking into. What the f***?
let's go back further to the day that robbie gets killed get the med kit robbie stay with me stay with me it had everything sex murder nothing in that conversation had anything to do with hurting anybody
Becky Foxdor was hiding a lot of information from police during the course of the investigation. I hear the pop, pop, pop.
At what point did you understand that Becky was beginning to be associated with your best friend Robbie's murder?
On the day of Robby Doar's funeral, detectives say they make two major discoveries.
On top of that, police say there is that suspicious phone call between Becky and Larry Sr. that she deleted and initially denied even took place.
Then after almost five hours of interrogation. Thank you, Becky. Good luck to you, okay? They arrest Becky.
At what point did you understand that Becky was beginning to be associated with your best friend Robbie's murder?
Meanwhile, during Becky's lengthy interrogation, just a few rooms away, Larry Richmond Jr. asks to speak with the detectives again. Larry Richmond Jr.
initially told them that he didn't know anything about that firearm. After doing that, it was clear that Larry Richmond Jr. realized that they knew more than he thought they did.
Looking at Larry Richmond Jr. 's phone, there is a string of text messages where Larry Richmond Sr. continuously asks Larry Richmond Jr. about the Peacemaker, which we later discover was the nickname that Larry Richmond Sr. had given to the Taurus judge.
The interrogators say, do you want to be like your father? Do you want to go to jail for 22 years? Do you want to miss your kids growing up just like your father did? It stops here. It stops now. And he's fully cooperative at that point.
He said his father, Larry Richmond Sr., had told him at some point, if anything ever happens, I have firearms buried in the backyard.
Detectives head to Mandy's house and dig up three firearms with the serial numbers scratched off. They even discover surveillance footage of Larry Sr. walking to the backyard, allegedly carrying this tote bag full of guns. But Tatar's judge is not found.
Robby's colleagues, in utter disbelief, are trying to collect themselves.
You didn't know he had any guns? No. Did he ever make you feel unsafe? Never.
Larry Richmond Sr. is charged with multiple counts of felony weapon possession and is placed in jail. Becky is also in jail on her obstruction of justice charge. Yet police say there is nothing that specifically connects Larry Sr. and Becky to Robbie's death besides that deleted phone call from the night of the murder.
Detectives start thinking, oh, he's reaching out to talk to Becky. And it changes everything as far as, wait a second, he's looking to communicate.
Why do you think he tried to reach out to you after the funeral? I have no clue. And slip that note inside the card that said, we have to talk.
Becky, Robbie, Larry Sr. and Mandy used to go on double dates together, but now one of them is dead, two of them are in jail. Detectives have already cleared Mandy of involvement in the murder, but they need to speak with her again.
Let me ask you a question. What do you think is going on between Larry and your sister? You're not the only one in this trick bag.
Mandy Fillmore has had a harrowing 48 hours. Her fiance and her sister are now both in jail. Since her last interview, police have discovered stolen guns they say were buried in her own backyard by her fiance, so detectives want to ask her more about Larry Sr. 's whereabouts on the night of the murder.
Let's go back further to the day that Robbie gets killed. Where do you go after work? Home. Home, okay. Is Larry home? No. To your best recollection, where's Larry? I don't know.
Mandy had previously told detectives that Larry Sr. was with her the evening Robbie was shot. Now she seems to confirm that she has no idea where he really was that night.
Would your kids normally have been home on a Tuesday night?
Okay. I can tell you us, with a lot of women, and we've had one just walked out of here, and we had one in here last night. And they're all being cooperative, and they all have information that's positive to our case. Okay? So you're not the only one in this trick bag.
That note to Becky in the card. When was the first time you heard about that note?
Was this note in it when you gave her the sympathy card? Does this raise a red flag to you? For a guy that's only met your sister five times?
Your sister is in custody for deleting a phone call that was very important. And there's a five minute phone call right before Robbie's murder. I mean, minutes before Robbie's murder. And guess who that came from? Larry. What do you think is going on between Larry and your sister?
Larry Sr. exercises his right to a lawyer and remains silent, and Becky still adamantly denies having an affair. But investigators are sticking to their theory that the two were having an affair and conspired to murder Robby Doerr. A few days after Mandy's interview, they question Larry Richmond Jr. again.
Is it possible that Larry was just trying to hit on Becky and that she didn't reciprocate? No.
So the last call that was on Becky's phone from Larry Richmond Sr. prior to February 26th of 2019 occurred approximately around January 12th of 2019. So there had been no evidence of any communication between Becky Foxdor and Larry Richmond Sr. for a significant period of time leading up to the night Robbie Dorr was murdered.
As the Evansville Police Department continues to investigate Robby's death, Larry Richmond Jr. and Larry Richmond Sr. head to court.
Larry Jr. pleads guilty to his stolen weapons charges and serves no time in jail, while Larry Sr. pleads guilty to multiple counts of felony firearms possession and is sentenced to five years in prison. And seven months after Becky was charged with obstruction of justice for deleting that phone call, from the DA's office, a shocking announcement.
Becky calls her oldest son, Nathan, to come and be by her side.
The obstruction of justice charge against Becky may have been dropped, but Robbie's daughter remained steadfast in her opinion of Becky.
In this case, the location data matches up with the surveillance footage. You're starting to see the entire picture.
Nathan is allowed on the scene, and he calls Becky's youngest son, Taylor, who then was 21, and is living at the house.
It's been nearly a year since firefighter Robbie Doerr was killed in his driveway, his wife Becky hearing the gunshots.
So far, no arrests have been made for Robbie's murder, and for his family, the wait for justice is taking a toll.
Becky tells us she was never engaged, but admits she did date.
Then on the one year anniversary of Robbie's killing, a surprise announcement. Police name a person of interest in the case.
Authorities believe Larry Sr. 's cell phone could provide critical clues in the case, so they get a search warrant and seize it.
I'm John Carter. I'm a criminal investigator with the High Tech Crime Unit out of the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor's Office. In early 2021, we were provided with a device that belonged to Larry Richmond Sr. But there's a big problem here. Police don't have the passcode to get into his phone. In this particular case, we applied the algorithm to the phone.
The computers will literally run every possibility of passwords you can imagine. That takes a long time.
In this case, it takes months. But then they hit pay dirt.
One day we came in and a potential passcode had been found. I was calling everybody from the Evansville Police Department, letting them know that we had found the passcode to the phone.
We were able to see his location data that put him near the scene of the crime at approximately 6.35 p.m., approximately 20 minutes prior to the murder. We then had him traveling north and turning his phone off at approximately 6.54 p.m., and then turning his phone back on at approximately 7.20 p.m. near a gas station.
During the course of our examination of the digital evidence, we discovered that Larry Richmond Sr. was using a police scanner app that's going to raise a lot of questions that need answers.
Larry Richmond Sr. listens to the police scanner app both before and after the murder. We were able to see that he was looking at the news. There's a popular Facebook site in Evansville called Evansville Watch. He was reviewing that. And also, notably, he was looking at photos of Robby Dorr. There were a lot of cached images that his phone was saving from Robby Dorr's Facebook.
Authorities recover a call log from Larry Sr. 's iPhone that shows he allegedly made several calls to Becky in the weeks before Robby's murder.
In Larry Richmond's case, his entire phone, he deleted almost everything in it. But we can see everything that's also been deleted that hasn't been overwritten. So December of 2018 to the murder date, they had 12 phone calls and some text messages.
He is the fiance of your sister. Are you thinking that maybe he was in love with you?
Authorities get a tip from an inmate who, according to a police report, alleges Larry Sr. confirmed having an affair with Becky, and more importantly, even claims that Larry Sr. confessed to killing Robby. What possible reason would he have to tell a cellmate after he was arrested for the gun charges that he murdered Rob and that he was having an affair with you?
So things that were happening point closer and closer to Larry Richmond Sr. being the person that we need to be looking at.
Three years after Robbie's murder, Evansville authorities finally make their move.
What the prosecution is saying is that you conspired with your sister's fiance to murder your husband.
It's the state of Indiana versus Elizabeth Fox Doerr. So why are they talking about Barbie?
He calls her Barbie and then at the end signs that you know who. I'm not Barbie.
My name is Rob Phillips, and I'm the co-counsel. I've been working with my dad for nine years.
This is the first case I've tried as the elected prosecutor, so the stakes were very high. Stan is the prior elected prosecutor and has tried hundreds of murder cases, so I knew just who to try this case with.
Since this is the first trial in the county to allow TV cameras in court, what is already a lightning rod of a murder case gets even more attention.
Larry Richmond is not literally on trial here, but in a sense he is, because to prove there's a conspiracy and that she conspired with him to have her husband killed, we have to show that he did in fact kill her husband.
Their actions were very much linked, and that's what makes it a conspiracy case.
Essentially what police and prosecution were saying is that you didn't pull the trigger to kill Robbie, but you set it all up.
A guard at the jail where Becky and Larry were held before trial tells of a mysterious note attached to, of all things, a packet of ramen noodles. and it's addressed to someone named Barbie. In prison slang, this is called a kite.
The inmate workers find the packet with the note attached to it and immediately give this to their supervisor, who's a correctional officer.
He calls her Barbie and then at the end signs it, you know who, and he's talking about not testifying at trial.
And so we knew that it came from Larry Richmond Sr.
Ever. The prosecution keeps the focus on Larry Richmond Sr. and where they allege he was on the night of the murder.
They have a phone conversation around that time that lasts for four minutes and 18 seconds, and then he turns his phone off. His phone's completely black with no data at all. The murder happens, and then his phone comes back on as he's walking into the Circle K. Around 7, 12 p.m., Larry Richmond Sr.
He knows the news that a firefighter was shot because he's listening to a police scanner app.
But remember, this isn't Larry Sr. 's trial, it's Becky's. And the state's case against her keeps coming back to the phone call she deleted the night her husband was murdered.
Just 15 minutes before Robby Doerr was ambushed and killed, the defendant spoke with Larry Richmond Sr. on the phone. As soon as the defendant was finished talking to Larry Richmond Sr., she deleted that phone call. Were any other phone calls deleted around this date and time?
There were no deleted phone calls on February the 26th of 2019 other than the deleted phone call from the contact known as Larry Ali.
ABC News reached out to Larry Richmond Sr. and his attorney to ask about his relationship with Becky and the allegations authorities have made against him. They declined to comment, and Larry Sr. has pleaded not guilty to the murder and conspiracy charges against him.
The defendant in this case, Elizabeth Foxdor, thought she could delete a phone call and get away with murder.
Prosecutors play some highlights of the police interview Becky gave days after the crime.
At least can you admit to us that you withheld the information about who you knew that was on the phone call?
A gunman could be on the loose, and Becky says she was scared.
She has photos with him. She spent holidays with him. And they even went on a double date with her sister and Robbie Dorr.
There's been so much discussion about the nature of Becky's relationship with Larry Sr. Now prosecutors argue they have an eyewitness, Larry Richmond Jr., and he's got a secret to share.
Although she tells detectives she didn't know him well enough to form an opinion of him, Richmond Sr. 's own son is going to testify about a time he was with his father.
It sounds like damning testimony, but Becky's defense team goes on offense.
Larry Richmond Jr. took the stand and told a story about seeing his father kiss Becky behind Robby Doerr's home in approximately March of 2018.
We look at all angles of everything. Where's his daughter? She's right there.
Correct. The prosecution says that you were having an affair with Larry Sr.
What did you call Robbie? I know he was your stepfather, but what did you call him?
The evidence will suggest her motive was financial gain with her immediate interest in the firefighter pension. Did your mother ever talk to you about the firefighter pension after the murder of Robbie Dorr?
When's the first time she brought that conversation up?
And how many times did you say that she talked to you about it?
Robbie's adult daughter, Lindsey Griffin, is also notified. Like many others arriving at the scene, she is unprepared for what she's about to see.
Why are so many people blaming you, even your own son?
Over six days, over 20 witnesses testified in this trial. Sons, a daughter, a sister, but not the defendant.
In this case, Becky didn't testify. Becky maintained her conviction the entire time that she had no involvement in this crime.
During the wait for the verdict, the jury is out and tensions are high.
You're sitting with a client. Her life is going to change in a matter of seconds.
Did hearing the word guilty come as a relief to you? Yes. Been five years waiting to hear those words. Did you think they would come back with a not guilty?
Because other than one phone call from February 26th of 2019, law enforcement gained no new evidence against Becky Foxtor over the course of the next five years to allege or show that she had any involvement.
At Becky's sentencing, Robbie's loved ones make emotional pleas.
As Robbie is lying there, heartbroken family members and colleagues want to be near him, but Evansville police cannot allow their crime scene to be entered.
Is there a way you could rehabilitate your relationship with your sister Becky?
While Mandy is no longer engaged to Larry Sr., she still holds on to him in her own way. That ring you're wearing on your wedding finger, did Larry give you that?
The Evansville Fire Department has honored Robbie Doerr's memory with a plaque and a fire truck. The truck was dedicated to Robbie Doerr, who is our most recent deceased active duty firefighter.
Oh, yeah. When a member of the service, police officer, or a fireman has been killed, you step outside your personal attachment to the case. Then you protect the integrity of the crime scene, that you were able to get justice for that person who was the victim.
They are turning their focus to gathering clues and asking questions.
That's not a casing. That's an actual round. That's a round, yeah. The crime scene was very chaotic. We found no shell casings. Right away, there weren't any real solid leads.
I want to say I'm very, very little. Robbie's lived in this town his whole life. He's a firefighter for nearly 30 years. Who would want Robbie dead?
51-year-old Robbie Doerr was one of Evansville's bravest, a second-generation firefighter who'd served his hometown for nearly three decades. And so what did Robbie do? Robbie rode on the back.
No, he's not. Oh, my God. Robbie Doerr pulls into this driveway. He's ambushed and gunned down.
And so when you ride in the back, you get to talk and guide the newer guys. Yes.
Robbie was a devoted father, husband, grandfather, and firefighter. And in addition to all those roles, he took on another. He was working full time at the fast food chain, Taco John's. You would think that being a firefighter would be enough.
Robbie and Becky had known each other for 11 years before they started dating.
At the age of four, Becky is adopted into the Fox family, as was Mandy Fillmore. You were two and a half. She was four. Tell me about your big sister growing up.
Yeah. Days after the murder, police spoke with Robbie's friend, Larry Wilt, who outlined how Robbie says he wanted to give Becky everything, even, Larry worried, to his own detriment.
You're pulling into the house after the funeral. Right. Lights and sirens, guns out, dogs barking.
Larry says the little things really started adding up for Robbie.
Was your dad the kind of person who would get really excited about somebody new and then jump to a proposal in marriage?
At this point, detectives want to learn more about his relationships at the final hours of his life.
Robert Doerr walked into an ambush. what's going on in his world that would have caused this to come to his own home in his driveway. It was an assassination.
The medical examiner discovered that Robbie was actually hit with two different types of projectiles. There's only a few types of weapons in the world that can shoot both shotgun and pistol ammunition. A tourist judge is actually one of the types of firearms that shoots both shotgun as well as solid projectiles.
The detectives did a search for any stolen guns in the area. During that search, we found a pawn shop close by where a tourist judge was stolen.
Police are now on the hunt for that stolen tourist judge handgun and any more evidence that may start connecting some dots.
Is that a normal thing around here that people delete phone calls and messages? Unless you have something to hide.
You're looking for anything that might help you to find out what's going on in Robert's life.
Robbie Doerr was a first responder here at the Evansville Fire Department, where he worked for nearly 30 years. And for 25 of those years, he worked at this station. For most of that time, his best friend was another firefighter named Larry Wilt. And so this was one of the busiest fire stations, right?
Police even looked at similar crimes that had taken place elsewhere in the area. It took fingerprints, footprints. There was no match.
It sounded like science fiction at the time, this way you could take decades-old DNA, put it into a genealogy database, build a family tree for your suspect, and then that takes you right to his door. That was pretty amazing.
Her fiance, who was about to marry her, adopt her daughter, he gets home and he immediately notices something is wrong. There's blood smeared on the stairway. The killer had attacked her in the bedroom?
Within a year, he was solving cases almost every week. And the more cold cases they closed, the more publicity they got. And police departments around the world started sending them cases. It's just grown exponentially. In terms of publicly announced solves, Othram is number one in the world. That includes homicides, rapes, unidentified bodies that they've been able to give names to.
Correct. At that point, Authram's in-house genealogy team takes over to build a family tree for the suspected killer of Kathy Swartz.
Brandon Best is almost out of central casting for a Texas Ranger. He's this imposing man with his white hat. When David Middleman founded Othram, nobody had heard of them. And when Best visited in 2019, he was really kind of taken aback.
Pass came away impressed. He heard about the opportunity to solve a cold case, and he thought, let's team up.
He gets home at 3.30, and he immediately notices something is wrong.
So on January 14, 1995, the Beaumont Police Department gets a 911 call from a man at a townhouse in West Beaumont.
He had found his daughter in the second floor bathroom, slumped over the tub.
That woman was Catherine Edwards, and she's a teacher at a local elementary school.
Her father said he grabbed her and pulled her over and rolled her over to look and see if there's anything he could do. He was crying hysterically.
Dad covers her with a towel. Police show up. There's one officer by the name of Carmen Brown. She shows up first, and she secures the crime scene.
He would later describe it as like the walls were painted with blood.
Catherine and her twin sister Allison grew up in Beaumont. They're part of a close-knit Presbyterian family. They both attended Forest Park High School and then Lamar University, which is in Beaumont. And they both became school teachers at the Beaumont Independent School District. Catherine and her sister were extremely close.
When you talk about Mary Catherine and talk about Allison and look at them, I mean, they are identical twins. You can't tell them apart. They both had students come up to each other in the grocery store thinking they were the other twin.
She came by, visited with her sister, went home. From what we can tell, she'd had a glass of wine and just kind of was relaxing and about to go to bed. And I think the last time she was heard from was about 8 o'clock that night.
One of the neighbors told police that he heard someone clomping down the stairs overnight on the night of January 13th.
It lasted for 60 to 90 seconds. And they said they never heard a scream, so they just figured that something else might have been going on. They had no idea that there was a murder taking place next door.
Crime scene investigators found that there was no sign of forced entry, which is significant because it either meant that Katherine had kept her door unlocked or had potentially recognized her killer and let him in.
Investigators found semen on Katherine's bedspread and from the rape kit. We've got some DNA here.
Kathy's baby, who's nine months old, dressed in pants, a shirt. She has one sock on. Her diaper looks like it's been recently changed. She was standing up in the crib when Mike walked in.
Police were really stumped. They tried every avenue they could think of, but every avenue hit a dead end. One of their initial theories was that the killer had some sort of law enforcement background. The handcuffs were Smith & Wesson. That's a popular brand with law enforcement.
They were trying everything they could think of. They really did. They went and tracked down sales of handcuffs in this area, receipts.
All members of the Belmont Police Department were tested. There were no matches.
It went from a rumor to just spreading like wildfire throughout the community. Everybody wanted to know, was this a one-time deal? Was this a serial killer?
You have all these puzzle pieces, but if they don't all fit together, you don't see the picture.
In 2020, a courier drops off a package at Authram's office. And inside are a sample of the bedspread from Catherine Edwards' apartment, a vial of DNA taken from the posthumous rape kit. Authentic technicians take a look, and they build a genetic profile of their suspect.
Aaron Llewellyn knew one who would work the case for free, and that was his wife, Tina.
Tina doesn't ask. Tina Llewellyn was a detective in the Beaumont Auto Crimes Division. and she had an amateur interest in genealogy.
when Tina Llewellyn is looking through the matches to their suspect. These are distant relatives of the suspected killer. She notices that a lot of them are in clustered in Cajun country in Louisiana. And the same contact name keeps popping up. This woman named Sheryl Lapointe.
Cajun ancestry is notoriously complicated and complex to perform genealogical work on.
Aaron goes and does research and finds out that he had a criminal history from here, and it was a prior sexual assault that had occurred in 1981. And there was a moment like, oh, this is our guy.
So one of the first things that investigators notice is that there doesn't seem to be any sign of forced entry, which again suggests that she knew the person who came in and killed her.
He drove her to a nearby park, threatened her with a knife, tied her hands behind her back, and raped her in the backseat of the car. Then he dropped her off at her house.
He said, yeah, I did it. I just got carried away.
She said that the prosecutor talked to her, said, you know, this is his first offense. We want to plead him to an aggravated assault. She didn't understand what that meant other than he was pleading to a felony and for assaulting her. And so she agreed to the plea bargain agreement.
Investigators figure out that Clayton Foreman is working in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. And he's working as a rideshare driver.
We've got a suspect. Now we've got to make sure that's the right guy. So they go. They pull the trash can. They get some plastic silverware from takeout and some other things from the trash can.
There are defensive wounds found on her hands. Her throat has been cut in multiple places. She's been strangled.
Clayton Foreman goes on trial in March of 2024 in Beaumont. He is charged with capital murder.
That 911 tape was very impactful to start the trial off with. That really gets you involved and to know that something horrible happened.
Alison is now 60 years old. And she offered really powerful testimony about growing up with Catherine.
Allison recalls the afternoon where her sister's body was discovered. Catherine just never showed up to this lunch. So eventually her father, Lum, agreed to go check on her.
And it was just heartbreaking to see. I mean, her twin, identical twin, is what she would have looked like today if she was alive. And there she is up on the stand testifying. And the emotion and the love and the hurt, all of it came out and was so impactful with the jury.
Allison said when Katherine died, she thought her parents died a little bit that day, too.
Without the DNA, the story doesn't matter. That's that one puzzle piece that puts it all together.
There is a bloody footprint in the bathroom. It looks like the suspect took a shower after the murder to try to maybe wipe the blood off, clean up. But in the process of doing so, he left behind a left footprint, size 9, in blood.
She relived it on that stand. And it was amazing to watch her, how brave she was to do that.
The case was very one sided and the prosecution had all the witnesses had all the evidence. There's very little the defense could do.
It took police nearly 30 years to bring Clayton Foreman to trial for the murder of Catherine Edwards. It took the jury less than an hour to convict him. It was very fast. He was sentenced to life in prison.
When the police initially interviewed him, he had this kind of flat affect to his voice. He didn't seem to be all that upset that she was dead. He didn't get emotional. And that seemed very suspicious to police.
There were about 36 different wounds on her body. She put up a fight.
On the refrigerator, they noticed two pieces of writing. Metallica was written on the refrigerator and Harley was here. These were inexplicable writings that apparently had been erased.
In fact, he has a Harley Davidson decal on his truck. The truck was spotted outside Kathy's apartment that very afternoon of her murder.
You know, when they further look into him, he doesn't have an alibi for that afternoon. So he immediately becomes their number one suspect.
They take fingerprints and footprints from him, and those prints also do not match.
But they're not finding anything suspicious until a gift-wrapped lead suddenly falls into their lap. A white car is crashed and abandoned nearby. And get this about the driver. He had bloody clothing on.
Police here in St. Charles, Missouri still had no motive, no witnesses, and no way to quell the rising fear of the St. Charles community. Fear and anxiety that grew even more after three men broke into a bowling alley, took $700, and tied up the janitor in the process.
So people wondered if there was a connection between the two robberies.
So it was about to break 80 degrees on this Friday morning around 11 a.m., and as Officer Dean Meyer's patrol car is making its way toward Interstate 70, a mail carrier was on her rounds too. This security video showing her dropping off mail at a strip mall grocery store, then driving her truck a few doors down to enter the office where Bob Eidman sold car insurance. Nobody heard her first scream.
It blew my mind, like, whoa. Travis Wade Ensley is about to blow a lot of minds at police headquarters, where leads in Bob Eidman's murder have been hard to come by. The car that I wrecked was a white four-door Saturn.
Police now feel that he has a lot of explaining to do. So as Travis recalls, his story goes kind of something like this.
So Travis calls police to report his car as stolen, but then is stunned to suddenly find himself a potential person of interest in a murder.
While Diane does appear to be upset in this photo, some detectives at the scene felt she was not overly emotional.
Then there's Detective Stephanie Kaiser. Already a veteran sex crimes investigator, Kaiser was respected for her sensitivity and understanding with victims.
Now Detective Kaiser is about to become the St. Charles Police Department's Diane Whisperer.
When you say financial problems, what do you mean?
These conversations with Diane will shape and reshape the police investigation into Bob Eidman's murder. At the end of that first day, Diane sounds like every other resident of St. Charles. She is terribly afraid.
And no one knows yet where that evidence will lead, especially in the wake of the very first astonishing story that Diane Eidman tells Detective Kaiser, with words that will be ringing in lots of heads at police headquarters.
Deborah Kennedy was the first person to hear those desperate cries and tried to catch up with her as the mail carrier ran into traffic on the busy road before Officer Meyer spotted her.
At the time of his death, Bob Eidman had been married to his wife, Diane, for more than two decades. And yet, even those closest to him could find Diane to be something of an enigma to them.
When you would ask Bob about Diane, what kinds of things would he say about her?
Now, Detective Kaiser was reeling from the incredible story that Diane had just told her.
Diane Bowling-Eidman, seen here on her wedding day in 1978 with her father Jerome, was just 26 years old when he was murdered inside the home he shared with his wife Lenore, Diane's mother. The murder case that made headlines in this region all began when a call came through in the wee hours on the morning of April 6th, 1984. Gordon Adams was an officer with the St. Louis County PD.
What went out over the radio when you heard the call?
What are you thinking when you're hearing this story for the first time?
David Barron was a detective with the St. Louis County Police assigned to the case. So Lenore Bolling was asserting that an intruder had come into the house, somehow found her husband's service revolver, used that service revolver to kill him, and then left.
How did that strike you as a plausible story, given your years of experience in law enforcement?
And she tries to investigate what's going on. She goes into Bob's office and gets the shock of her life.
Diane's mother had told police she believed she was being stalked in the days prior to the shooting by a black male driving a black car who had been leaving notes at their home. And there was a note found at the crime scene.
How did Bob feel about living with someone who was accused of shooting her husband to death? Bob was not happy about that.
After that fateful night, this saga ending here in the fall of 1985. Diane Eidman's mother, Lenore Bolling, on trial for capital murder in the death of her husband, Diane's father, Jerome Bolling. Lenore Bolling found not guilty of her husband's murder.
The irony not lost on investigators as Diane Eidman, more than 20 years later, now a person of interest in a different killing.
But it was something else Diane Eidman told investigators about her own husband that they said gave them pause.
Now with Bob's death, police say she was suddenly in line to receive more than $300,000 in life insurance.
Bob's older brother by 21 months. Glenn Eidman grew up as a straight-A student, and he was a frequent target of Bob's verbal barbs.
Glenn always believed that Bob was his mother's favorite. Even so, he said he was not prepared for what he says she asked him to do as they attended Bob's funeral.
It was St. Charles' first murder of 2007. And right from the start, it was the kind of thing that just isn't supposed to happen here. That's because St. Charles, Missouri is an idyllic bedroom community. It's just over the bridge from St. Louis with a historic downtown and historic values as well.
But then the Major Case Squad does a deep dive into Bob's email, his phone and computer records. They're searching for any hidden clues. They make a discovery they're eager to know a lot more about, just as Glenn comes in for his interview.
Turns out this long-married insurance agent was leading a secret double life.
When you have a secret, what vulnerability does that give someone like Bob Eidman?
As investigators continue searching through Bob's phone records, they find something else noteworthy. One phone number keeps popping up, belonging to a man from out of town.
What is it like to all of a sudden learn that there's this whole other secret part of his life that you knew nothing about?
I guess the idea is that you're supposed to shed the stress of the big city as you come across the wide Missouri River and land here. But as we know, money woes, lies and rage and desperation, the grip of fear, They do not stop at the river's edge.
And as a young, untested detective is taking on his very first big murder case, a totally unexpected assist from the cutting edge of forensic science, it's going to take this investigation into surprising territory and bring answers at last to the key question, why was Bob Eidman killed?
Two blocks behind me, Bob Eidman was found robbed and murdered. Diane found out on the site that her husband had been murdered. Yes, she did.
Friends and family are mourning the loss of Bob Eidman, gunned down in his office in a small strip mall in St. Charles, Missouri.
Now Bob Eidman was dead, and nothing made sense. It was a little before 11 a.m. on June 8th when a mail carrier discovered Bob's lifeless body on the floor of his office.
The investigation into Bob Eidman's murder is all hands on deck.
Bob's wife Diane said he always carried his wallet in his back pocket. Police are desperate for leads, so they're going to try something unconventional. They cut the back pockets out of Eidman's pants to send for something they call touch DNA testing.
It's a newer technology and it's a long shot. Police meanwhile canvassed the neighborhood where the crime occurred. They're knocking on doors. They're looking for every clue they can find.
A white car passing by twice. But the video is grainy.
Just two blocks behind me, Bob Eidman was found robbed and murdered.
With lead after lead coming up empty and the clock ticking on that major case squad, Diane Eidman. She remains a subject of, well, we'll call it curiosity. She was, after all, the person closest to Bob.
Tough questions need to be asked about the state of the Eidmans' marriage.
Diane insisted the marriage was fine. But when investigators seize Bob's computers to be analyzed, they make a shocking discovery. Bob's been visiting gay websites online. He's looking for massages and sexual relations.
A secret relationship with a man who lived more than three hours away. Police take a drive to interview him.
We just became good friends and just kept talking from there on. He says he never visited Bob in St. Charles, but said the two spoke every day and that he loved Bob. The two would stay in motels closer to his hometown when they got together. During the interview with investigators, he rolled up his right sleeve to reveal a tattoo that he said was for Bob.
With such tender and strong feelings for Bob, a handful of scenarios leap to the mind of law enforcement. Could it have been a jilted lover who murdered Bob Eidman?
In theory, a jilted lover made potential sense to investigators. But the man had an alibi. On the date of the murder, he was at work, hours away from St. Charles.
After passing a polygraph, Bob's secret lover is cleared. But it's something he tells investigators about Diane that raises red flags.
Investigators are now zeroing in on Diane. How angry was she when she discovered Bob's secret life? Angry enough to commit murder?
Days after Bob Eidman is murdered in his office, police discover the long-married insurance agent had a secret male lover. A man whom he met up with for motel room trysts and who he spoke to every day. A man who was devoted to Bob.
The secret lover is alibied out for Bob's killing. But in a frank session with police, he says Bob told him that Diane had discovered their relationship. And he says that Bob had told him Diane's reaction had led to a full-blown argument between the two.
According to St. Charles homicide detective Don Stepp, the third and fatal shot had been fired through Bob Eidman's left eye as the assailant stood over his prone body.
It was up to Detective Stephanie Kaiser, the Diane Whisperer, to broach the delicate subject with Bob's widow while interviewing her at the Eidman's home. Kaiser said Diane told her that she'd learned of her husband's relationship with the man after discovering an email between the two that Bob denied having an affair. But it was the tone of that email which had deeply hurt her feelings.
In Detective Kaiser's account, Diane seemed to be struggling a little bit with the nature of her husband's relationship to the man or what they did during their time together.
Kaiser said Diane told her that when she learned of the relationship after discovering that email, she and Bob discussed it, but they never argued.
But she laid her foot down. She gave him an ultimatum. You are not to see this guy anymore.
As far as you know, did Bob adhere to that ultimatum?
Diane Eidman finds herself sitting in a polygraph room at the St. Charles Police Department.
Adding to investigators' frustration, a day after Diane takes that polygraph test, the clock expires. The major case squad is out of there. 37 officers, 15 different departments had spent more than 2,500 man hours investigating with no arrests. A frustrating end to a furious search for answers.
The task of solving the murder of Bob Eidman now falls to a junior detective in the department, Don Stepp.
Detective Stepp continues to immerse himself in the details of the case. It had been over a year since Bob Eidman was murdered when Stepp is at the airport in St. Louis and he spots Diane.
Despite the time that had passed, Diane had never fallen off of Stepp's radar. Diane Eidman knows that you're keeping a close eye on her, doesn't she? Yes, sir, she does. How would you characterize the look on her face when she saw you?
Police are seeking out anyone who might have spotted something that morning in Bob's office. With her office directly below Bob's, Deborah Kennedy didn't see anyone, but she might have heard something.
It is 2009. And Diane Eidman is spotted at the airport in St. Louis by Detective Don Stepp. How would you characterize the look on her face when she saw you? Shock. Stepp documents the incident, later learns that Diane took a trip to Las Vegas. But nothing comes of it.
Face it, there are few, if any, solid leads to pursue, including the identity of that mystery driver whose car was seen on the day of the murder.
Nearly two agonizing years after Bob's murder, it's as if this case is frozen in time.
It seemed like there were no answers. No. Then in March of 2009, that touch DNA from Bob's pocket is forwarded to Brian Krein. He's a forensic scientist with the St. Charles County Police Department.
With almost every angle of the case having been explored and explored again, it all comes down to what Cry could uncover with the DNA analysis.
That unknown DNA could lead investigators to Bob's killer, so CRY enters the profile into CODIS. That's a law enforcement database. Hours later, there's a hit.
What did you learn that person's name was? Paul White. When the name's first discovered, Detective Stepp is otherwise engaged.
You just want to run up and down the street and tell people we've got our guy?
Turns out Paul White was no stranger to law enforcement.
This new lead poses even more questions for investigators. Could Diane have hired Paul White to kill Bob or had White acted alone? When the DNA came in, that didn't seem to exclude her either. The idea being maybe she had hired somebody.
You now have Paul White's DNA on Robert Eidman's pocket at the time of his murder, right? Yes, sir. So I assume you want to talk to Paul White. Yes, sir, I do. And Paul White was not hard to find.
How you doing? And so in September 2010, Detective Stepp pays a visit to Paul White at a maximum security prison in Fulton, Missouri, where he's serving time for forgery.
And will that touch DNA evidence be enough to get that confession.
I'm getting taped and stuff, and I don't know what to... More than two years after Bob Eidman was robbed and murdered in his own insurance office, test results on trace DNA taken from his back pocket are in. And there's a match.
What did you learn that person's name was? Paul White. As investigators dig deeper into Paul White's background, they uncover a possible connection to Bob. It's been hiding in plain sight.
Among those files is an application for auto insurance. Two names are listed, Sherry White and her husband, Paul White. Paul White's wife's file was on Bob's desk? Yes, sir.
Investigators quickly clear Sherry White as a suspect in Bob Eidman's murder. With the trail of evidence now leading directly to Paul White, Detective Stepp decides it's time to meet face to face. This is where the magic happens. It doesn't look all that magical, does it? No, it doesn't. What happens to people when they come into a room like this?
Since Paul White is already serving a prison sentence for an unrelated forgery charge, he's literally a captive audience. Let's go back and talk about some of your strategy as you were going to talk to Paul White.
Are you thinking the long game at this point, or do you think he's going to start telling you stuff that he knows at that first interview?
Again and again during that first interrogation, you tell him, I've got your DNA. I mean, you must have told him, what, 10 or 15 times in the course of that conversation, right?
As news begins to spread that something bad has happened at Bob's office, concerned friends and associates in the insurance business, they rush to the site, like the longtime colleague who asked that we call her Dana.
The registration on the vehicle was out of date? That's correct. Who was the driver of the car?
So they had a longstanding relationship. Yes, sir. What was the indication that you had that Cleo Hines might have been involved in the murder of Robert Ibe? It was Cleo Hines' vehicle. You were sure of that?
Does Cleo Hines know a secret that could solve Bob Eidman's murder?
After several years of lead after lead turning cold, the investigation into Bob Eidman's murder is now heating up as lead detective Don Stepp zeroes in on a new suspect, a man named Cleo Hines.
Unlike Paul White, Hines immediately starts talking, saying White approached him the day of the murder.
I basically already knew that because of the gun.
Armed with Cleo Hines' confession, Step hits the road to Fulton Prison once more for another crack at Paul White.
But even after Detective Stepp reveals Cleo Hines has accused Paul White of being the gunman, Paul White doesn't blink.
Finally, the dam breaks. Paul White starts talking.
Paul White describes a chilling scene of a panicked Bob Eidman trying to comply with his assailant's demands for money with that notoriously sticky desk drawer, you know, where Bob kept his money instead of in a safe.
Cleo Hines told police he never even got out of the car at Bob Eidman's office. But Paul White wants police to believe that it was always Hines who had fired the bullets that killed Bob Eidman.
At the climax of a more than three-year investigation that at one point involved 37 officers, cops finally learned the details of what was stolen the day of Bob Eidman's murder.
With Paul White and Cleo Hines now both charged with Bob Eidman's murder, it now falls to Detective Stepp to break the news to Diane Eidman, who had long been in his crosshairs.
Here, some five years after Bob Eidman's murder, Paul White and Cleo Hines are set to stand trial in this courthouse. Two trials, two defendants with two totally different accounts of the crime.
As for Cleo Hines, he decided not to put his fate in the hands of a jury. Before his trial, he entered what's known as an Alford plea.
The investigation into Bob Eidman's murder had cast a shadow of suspicion on his widow, Diane. Now, she stood in court and gave her own account of all she had lost. Were you there for Diane's victim impact statement?
Diane found out on the site, didn't she, that her husband had been murdered? Yes, she did. As investigators comb the area looking for video of any potential suspects, they happen upon this grocery store just a few doors down from Bob Eidman's office. Inside, they take note of the security camera that captured the mail carrier earlier that morning.
It was right about there, pointed directly towards the front door. Once they get a look at the video it recorded, it's the first big break in the case.
Insurance agent Bob Eidman is dead, shot to death in his office along a busy thoroughfare near the interstate in St. Charles, Missouri.
Diane found out on the site that her husband had been murdered. Yes, she did.
And like this town's famous Christmas tradition celebration and their lively Oktoberfest, murder comes but once a year.
And then you can see in the distance those apartment houses. You talked to all the people who lived in those apartment houses too, didn't you?
And could one part of Bob Eidman's line of work have put him in jeopardy?
But his good friend and insurance colleague Dana, she felt Bob was taking too great a risk with the form of payment he did take.
Though he was known for accepting cash, he doesn't have a safe. Instead, police learned Bob would put the cash he received from clients into a far less secure place.
When police managed to open the drawer and they checked the cash box, oh, there's money inside, about $200.
And you're looking for anywhere that somebody might have thrown something, like Bob Eidman's wallet.
What is it like to all of a sudden learn that there's this whole other secret part of his life?
So you were checking for DNA everywhere else, but this was just kind of out of the blue. You just thought, you know, we might as well give this a try.
If we were going to say what size personality he had, like small to large, where would you put him on the scale there, Paige? I'd say extra large.
He finally got to be his own boss. But there were great challenges, weren't there? Yeah.
I did. Remember that video camera in the grocery store next to Bob's, pointing toward the street in front? Police have been poring over the footage, and now they may have found something of interest. There, that white car.
I'm impressed you can tell it's a four-door vehicle. It looks like a white car. But it turned out the small St. Charles Police Department had a car maven.
With both Gary and Bonnie's ex cleared, detectives are hitting walls left and right. But they're about to be floored by some information that reveals a disturbing coincidence in the Woodward family. Turns out Bonnie wasn't the only missing person in that household. Correct.
Bonnie Woodward's disappearance is the talk of the small town in Illinois she called home. Bonnie Woodward has been missing.
Investigators are frustrated and increasingly concerned.
But they're all kind of wild goose chases. Right. It's as if she's vanished into thin air.
You discover, wait, she's not the only missing person in that household.
This is a huge coincidence in a small town that a mother and stepdaughter go missing in the same house. Huge. Huge. Remember, Heather Woodward is Bonnie's 17-year-old stepdaughter. Bonnie adopted Heather and her brother Aaron after their dad passed away when Heather was just eight.
The house is a busy one, with Bonnie's adult daughter Jennifer and her two little girls, plus Heather, Aaron, and boyfriend Gary, all living under one roof. And the family tells detectives there was friction between Heather and Bonnie.
That teacher pictured in the high school yearbook along with Heather. Heather moved in with her just two weeks before Bonnie vanished. And now that both Bonnie and Heather are missing, investigators have lots of questions.
Heather painted a picture of your aunt as being abusive. What do you make of those allegations of abuse?
So now, according to this teacher, Heather leaves her home on the 17th, that same day Bonnie reports Heather as a runaway.
And now, detectives aren't making much headway in finding Heather either. The teacher who Heather had been living with says she has no idea where Heather might have gone.
Heather's teacher's interview only raises more questions for investigators. Are these disappearances linked? And if so, how? As investigators, you're fairly convinced that she might have had something to do with the disappearance, or at the very least, know something.
After almost a week and no sign of Bonnie, her family's anguish turns pointed, lashing out at that mystery man from the parking lot.
And that's when police get a game-changing phone call from a nearby library.
It seems someone showed up there with a teddy bear and a story to tell.
Summer is in full swing here in Alton, Illinois. Backyard barbecues, 4th of July fireworks. Bonnie Woodward used to host these kinds of events, but not this year. She's been missing for a week and in a twist, her teenage stepdaughter is missing too. Until out of the blue, eight days after Bonnie vanished, through these doors walks the missing teenager, Heather Woodward.
Being a nurse's aide, that's a lot of caregiving. She had it forever.
She showed up at a library. What did you think? That it was absolute s***.
And one of those people, police begin to realize, may have been that teacher, Christine Sheffel, who took Heather in. There was an investigation into Bonnie's parenting.
Do you think Heather was manipulating adults into thinking that her stepmother was evil?
That boyfriend, Gary Wilmorth, says he tries getting a hold of Bonnie around 4 o'clock, but his call goes straight to voicemail. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. Everybody was like, she would call if she was five minutes away.
One thing's clear to investigators. Heather was in someone else's care in the two weeks after she left that teacher's house, during that critical time when Bonnie went missing. So now, of course, detectives are curious. Who was she with? And why is Heather protecting them?
And as seasoned investigators, you thought, She's hiding something?
And might that have motivated somebody to try to protect her?
Are they just good Samaritans or something else?
The trail will lead detectives down these winding roads into truly uncharted territory.
Bonnie Woodward has been missing for over a week. Her boyfriend of seven years, Gary Wilmerth, says he catches glimpses of her in every passing stranger.
And investigators say they aren't taking no for an answer either. Bonnie's now 18-year-old stepdaughter, Heather Woodward, who also strangely went missing a week before Bonnie, has now suddenly reappeared.
After hours of questioning from detectives, Heather seems finally ready to reveal the identity of the people she says helped her run away.
And one of those church activities they went to? A graduation party for Heather and other seniors just two weeks before Bonnie went missing.
What jumps out at you about Roger Carroll?
This investigation is now shifting into high gear. Monica and Roger Carroll come in for questioning.
And by the next morning, when Bonnie doesn't show up for work, her co-workers are alarmed by something they see in the parking lot.
Heather Woodward, Bonnie's stepdaughter, is also called in again the very same day and pressed for more information about the day Bonnie went missing.
Investigators then confront Heather with a new piece of information. They found out that she and the Carrolls were together at a lake house in the days just before Bonnie went missing.
So you have a lot of circumstantial evidence, but nothing that cracks the case open. Right.
The family members must be chomping at the bit at this point.
Did you feel like there had to have been somebody out there that knew more than they were saying?
Summer winds to a close without Bonnie Woodward and without answers, until news of a body found on the banks of the Mississippi River here in Alton, Illinois, leaves her loved ones holding their breath.
That body, it turns out, is not Bonnie Woodward. But a break in the case is coming. The lab results from Bonnie's abandoned truck are back, and the results are stunning. The crime lab comes back with a very significant hit.
Tonight, a third woman in danger who broke the bizarre mystery of a missing mother. Who's been hiding daughter Heather? And could Bonnie have ended up in the same place? Family members must be chomping at the bit at this point.
And on a scale of 1 to 10 of your suspicion level, where did it go? Yeah, it spiked.
That sounds like bingo. Summer has turned to fall in Alton, Illinois. 48-year-old mom and nurse's aide Bonnie Woodward hasn't been seen in over three months. That's an eternity in a missing persons case.
But the Illinois State Police Crime Lab has been busy processing evidence, including fingerprints found on Bonnie's truck. In September, prints come in.
And on a scale of 1 to 10 of your suspicion level, where did it go? Yeah, it spiked. Roger Carroll is brought in again for questioning, while police, now with probable cause, conduct a massive search at the Carroll's sprawling rural residence.
Meanwhile, this time in the police interrogation room for a second interview, Roger is more chatty.
Roger tells investigators that he invited Bonnie's daughter, Heather, to stay with him and his family, only after becoming concerned about her account of a troubled home life.
Detectives assigned to the case soon learn that 47-year-old Bonnie Woodward is a force of nature.
But there's one little detail investigators have been deliberately coy about when talking to Roger Carroll.
Not only were his fingerprints found on her car, but he denied ever having met her or ever been there and ever been in that parking lot. So what do you make of that? That he's lying?
Bonnie has two grown children from her first marriage, Joseph, who's 28, and Jennifer, 26. Bonnie is also mom to two stepkids, Heather and Aaron. She adopted them after their father, Bonnie's third husband, passed away.
So the case goes cold. Your aunt is still missing.
It would take eight years and one newly installed prosecutor combing through a pile of Madison County cold cases. And the first one you stumbled on was Bonnie Woodward. First one, Bonnie Woodward. To breathe life back into Bonnie Woodward's investigation. Jennifer Mudge decides to try to open a cold case, but even before you can relaunch anything, you get a startling phone call.
at the time what am i thinking i'm thinking i'm gonna die roger carroll had been charged with obstruction of justice in the disappearance of bonnie woodward but now eight years later he's being accused of something else altogether by of all people his wife of over 30 years monica march of 2018 we received information from the jersey county sheriff's department that there was a domestic situation in which roger had caused injury to monica
I didn't know his connection. I didn't know this was the Bonnie Woodward suspect. So I went the next day, met her several hours from here where she was kind of hyped out.
She said for the most part it was a good marriage until there was some infidelity like a few years prior. She had recently figured out more infidelity and then had filed for divorce.
Monica tells Detective Nick Manns about the alleged attack, in which, as she's getting ready for work, she says Roger corners her in the laundry room.
Bonnie is also a devoted grandmother. She grew up as one of nine siblings, so she has a large extended family. What kind of aunt was she?
And how do you know it was a taser gun? What was it doing? Because it shocked me. So he drags it up your neck.
Monica says she somehow manages to get a hold of the taser and throws it into the next room.
You still have some abrasion, some little swelling there.
All these red marks are from your fight with him?
During this time, Monica does what so many victims, unfortunately, have to do, but it's a survival thing, is how am I going to get out of the situation? And she starts to de-escalate it slowly, verbally de-escalate the situation.
Family secrets are spilling out. I need my daddy. A teenager with a strange demeanor. She's clutching a teddy bear.
Eventually, that got to the point where he allowed her to get up and get ready for work and go.
Then she provided us information that she knew him to possess firearms, and she believed him to be suicidal at the time.
Detective Mann says he went to search for Roger the morning of the alleged attack.
We believe he's a danger, obviously, to her and to our community, but also to himself. So I'm driving down this road, which is Creek Road, which is where he lives. And this is actually, that would be his house at the time. He and Monica lived there. That was their home. I keep going up this hill. You can see it's pretty rugged terrain. I don't even realize at that time that this is his property.
So I go up here and I go left and I drive across this field and I get out of my car. And when I get up along this trail, I see something down there and I keep moving closer and it's him. Roger was lethargic. I felled in his jacket pocket, which turned out to be a bag of needles, of syringes. Then I found a vial of what I knew to be insulin.
I asked him if he was diabetic, and he said no, that he had hurt his wife and that he was trying to kill himself. I called my dispatch and said, send an ambulance this way.
What's the ambulance? No, this guy's not diabetic. He's for insulin. Attention, Brighton Rescue and Creek Road. The 52-year-old male took an overdose of insulin, a suicide attempt.
But what Detective Mann soon learns is that his fellow investigator, Scott Golicki, has been looking at Roger Carroll as Bonnie Woodward's possible killer.
Because at that point, you double down on every member of the Carroll family.
They need a talker, and they're about to get one. And investigators get a story they had not prepared for. Newly installed prosecutor Jennifer Mudge is working hard with police to try to solve Bonnie Woodward's cold case. They believe they can break it if a Carroll family member talks. As detectives are talking to Roger Carroll's wife, Monica, they get intriguing new info.
She remembers her husband taking a peculiar interest in Bonnie Woodward's daily life before she disappeared.
But the really chilling words about Roger, that was still to come.
Meanwhile, Roger is released from the hospital after his insulin overdose and is brought directly into police custody. where Detective Golicki greets him again after eight long years.
So after all that, you sit down with Roger. Years later, from the last interrogation.
But if Detective Golicki is counting on a crisis of conscience from Roger Carroll, he's about to be disappointed.
Since Roger completely clams up, they bring his wife Monica in again, and turns out she does have more to share.
Monica says Roger issues her a stark warning about Bonnie's family.
That's when Monica describes approaching their son Nathan with her suspicions.
But what might it take for Nathan to start talking?
We take you back to a core trauma. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Investigators are drilling down on the Carroll family, and the story of what they think might have happened to Bonnie Woodward is beginning to take shape.
What did he say that tipped his hand to you that he was about to spill the whole truth?
Back here, presumably, no surveillance was captured.
What you're about to see is the actual video police captured as Nathan brings them back to where he says the crime took place, a spot first identified eight years earlier by cadaver dogs.
Followed by the creek, where Nathan says he saw his dad dump Bonnie's ashes.
But not so fast. Some critical evidence will be unveiled in court, which could upend the case. The DNA on those bone fragments, it's not what police expected. Roger Carroll pleads not guilty to the murder of Bonnie Woodward, but he's facing some tall odds. He may just not understand how tall. One of the key pieces of evidence turned out to be a sassafras tree. Yes.
Tell me how you decided that you were going to try to bring that into the courtroom.
It isn't every day a tree becomes a star witness in a murder trial, but this was never your ordinary everyday case. So how would it factor in? Well, that and over a hundred other key pieces of evidence are finally being presented in court, nearly a decade after Bonnie Woodward went missing.
Given what you were up against, the fact that you didn't have a body, you didn't really have a motive, you didn't have a weapon, how confident were you that you could get a guilty verdict?
The jury must decide if Roger is guilty of first-degree murder. The earlier charges against him and Monica for harboring a runaway, Heather, would be dismissed. The defense opened up by vowing to poke holes in the state's case, particularly taking aim at the son, Nathan Carroll, telling the jury his story changed only after being granted immunity, or what they called a golden ticket.
Nathan testifies that he heard gunshots and told the jury in gruesome detail how he helped his father burn Bonnie's body.
I think Nathan realizes dad tried to kill his mom. And that's just crossing the line. If you think about Nathan, he is a young child. And he's being controlled by dad, and he witnesses something horrific.
The son, Nathan, testifies. And I'm told that it was a very stirring, powerful testimony. What do you remember of it?
Nathan's testimony doesn't really make sense. Nathan keeps saying he's reluctant, he did it anyway. Why would Nathan help his father do it? What's in it for him? It's a big mystery.
But the defense just keeps chipping away at that evidence, including those 27 bone fragments that were found on the property. In fact, there's a rather big bombshell in store for the jury.
Bones were found, but they're not the bones of the deceased.
In fact, it's not clear if they're human bones or animal bones or whether they're bones that were from an Indian burial many years ago.
Prosecutors argued that the bones were degraded by the fire, which Nathan described that burned Bonnie's body. And to prove that there actually was a fire on the property, the prosecution used an unexpected method and witness.
So we go over there and cut down the tree.
That tree damage, according to the testimony of a botanist from the University of Wisconsin, was reminiscent of a fire and appears to have happened at the same time Nathan claimed Bonnie's body had been burned. As a prosecutor, why is that critical?
There's a question, was there actually evidence of a fire? Or is it a fire around the time of 2010? Or is it not a fire? That's questionable.
How did Heather do on the stand? What was her testimony like?
What made her cry on the stand, do you remember?
And so what did you find when you dug into Gary's background?
Bonnie's boyfriend, Gary, took to the stand too and told the jury about what was lost when Bonnie's life was cut short.
When it was their turn, the defense team laid out a case that pointed the finger at Nathan as Bonnie's killer and argued that without him and the so-called golden ticket, the state's case was just circumstantial.
He was advised not to testify. Many attorneys advise their clients not to testify because, for one thing, they think it will shift the burden. They think the jury's gonna look at whether they believe the defendant, and suddenly the defendant has to prove his innocence, which he normally doesn't have to do.
After five days, the case is now in the hands of the jury.
The cases have been presented, and now the verdict is in the hands of the jury.
When you finally reached a decision, what was the feeling in the room?
And so when the verdict was read, how did the courtroom respond?
And just for the record, sir, what is your name, your full name?
He didn't even react? What went through your mind when you heard the verdict?
By the time of sentencing, the charges against Roger for domestic violence and obstruction were dropped.
People describe her as somebody who had a really loving heart.
When Gary's talking to police, he tells them that they've been an on-and-off couple for about seven years.
But as investigators start talking to Bonnie's coworkers, they learn she was last seen getting into a strange car with an unknown man.
The police wondered, could Bonnie be having an affair? Or was it something worse?
Going into its third day, a baffling mystery is unfolding in Alton, Illinois, a river town outside St. Louis. Nurse's aide and mom of four, Bonnie Woodward, vanishes in broad daylight just before her 48th birthday.
So with no sign of Bonnie anywhere, her family goes to the media, her older brother tearfully pleading with the public.
Bonnie's sister Rebecca and her niece Rachel don't hesitate to join in on the efforts, making the 700-mile drive to Alton from their home in Louisiana. Why were you concerned enough to get in the car and start driving?
He said, at times, I feel like I have the devil living inside me. Turns out Bonnie wasn't the only missing person in that household.
Chester McAdams piques the detective's interest not only because he dated Bonnie for a year, but he also has an extensive criminal record.
Chester clearly doesn't match the description of the man co-workers saw days earlier in the parking lot with Bonnie. But what about that tip from Bonnie's daughter Jennifer, who said Chester's father drives a silver Chevy Impala? Detectives want to talk it over with father and son.
It's a missing persons case that will confound an Illinois community. Flooding seasoned investigators with no shortage of witnesses. These interviews happening in this room right here, focusing on one person, one mother of four, whose sudden and perplexing disappearance sets off alarm bells. It all started at the end of a day shift one afternoon in June.
That was a common occurrence. They used to go either weekly or sometimes biweekly.
Nathan's experience was, I would characterize him as a recreational fisherman.
Investigators ask Nathan about employees at Chocolos' company, and the grandson mentions one who he says complains about being overworked and underpaid.
Nathan Carman is correct. There is a young woman Chocolos has been talking to.
While cleared as a suspect in the murder, Saadi was later convicted of stealing some $400,000 from Chaklis' company.
Anybody else in the family own any weapons? No. Anybody have access to any weapons? Anybody that knows anybody that knows anybody that has weapons? Nothing at all. Okay. So we've got no weapons, we've got no enemies that we know of. That we know of.
But in the wake of the Newtown massacre, these types of weapons were illegal to own in Connecticut, where Chocolos was murdered.
It's an expensive rifle, retailing for almost $2,000. Jed says he suggested other options that were more economical for target shooting, but the buyer knows what he wants.
After the discovery at Shooter's Outpost, Nathan is asked again about owning any guns.
It started out as a typical missing persons investigation, which is not criminal in nature. Our first order of business is naturally to find the missing people, gather the facts and circumstances to try to determine how they potentially went missing. Oftentimes people are not missing, they're just overdue.
Given the nature of the success rate that the Coast Guard has with search and rescue, I was very, very shocked that they were not finding anything.
We deferred to the Coast Guard for search and rescue efforts in that respect. They were really scouring the ocean, and the search efforts came up unsuccessful.
I think it was day six that the Coast Guard made a decision to call off any additional search. And at that point, they had covered 64,000 square nautical miles. which is a massive, massive search area.
It looked like he had been somewhat almost living out of his truck or sleeping in his truck. We found some receipts from different marine stores.
items purchased at area marinas in the hours before the fateful voyage included a rock type anchor that would never have worked for Nathan's boat. And then some lengths of chain They were curious purchases.
But there was also a bucket of eels that was in Nathan's truck. That stood out to me because eels are often used as bait when fishing for striped bass. And if you left the dock and didn't take your bait, what are you using for bait if you're going fishing?
But why not reach out for help? The Coast Guard said there was no Mayday call.
You would be in dire straits after, you know, five or six days.
At the same time that Nathan and Linda's vehicles were searched at the docks, police in Vermont were conducting a search of Nathan's house, which was under construction.
Another item that was seized during the search was a lengthy letter that Nathan had written to an unknown priest that described his relationship and his view of his mother.
My mother's bullying, calling me a quitter, a stuck-up snob who thinks he is a king, and a piece of basically characterized my childhood. One night, though, I went to bed imagining myself as essentially a master of my own hell, enjoying and inflicting grave bodily suffering on other people. So, yeah.
After his interview with Alfred Bucco, Nathan has all but stopped talking to the police and is never questioned about the letter or his missing computer. Reporter Lindsey Janis is one of the few people he is willing to talk to.
With Linda Carmen presumed lost at sea, her reportedly tumultuous relationship with her son Nathan was under renewed scrutiny. He sits down with 2020 for a second interview, which now holds new significance.
We've got no weapons. We've got no enemies that we know of. That we know of.
By now, more details of John Chocolos' death and the subsequent investigation have risen to the surface.
I got a call from my supervisor saying that Nathan had been recovered by a passing ship. I was shocked and I was thankful that there was a survivor.
We had no boat. We had no body. But as in any investigation, there's always evidence that can be recovered. It's just a matter of making sure that you know where to look.
It's all hands on deck at that point to try to uncover the truth.
As with the death of John Chocolos, according to investigators, there isn't enough evidence to charge Nathan with a crime. But in a twist of fate, a seemingly innocuous insurance claim for the sunken boat is about to take the saga of Nathan Carman in an unexpected direction.
New twist to the story-making national headlines involving Nathan Carman. They file what is known as a slayer petition, which prevents a person from inheriting property from someone they murdered.
He ended up taking depositions. He ended up going into court and arguing motions.
Is that correct? Okay. Nathan pleads the Fifth 81 times during this deposition. I plead the Fifth. I plead the Fifth. I plead the Fifth. I plead the Fifth. And I plead the Fifth. Meaning he declines to answer questions to avoid potentially incriminating himself.
The judge dismisses the case after he rules John Chocolos wasn't a resident of New Hampshire.
Was Nathan at fault for the sinking of his boat, or was he owed a payday?
So now we can start to maybe get some insight as to what transpired and why it transpired. But it was also concerning because Linda hadn't been recovered.
Pieces of the puzzle had started to come together and had started to paint a picture for us that this was, in fact, a criminal act.
There were too many inconsistencies. There were too many things that just didn't add up.
It became very, very clear that Nathan had committed a crime on the high seas.
We don't have a body. We don't have a boat. So it's a very, very difficult case to try to prove. The grand jurors have to decide, is there enough evidence to proceed and indict?
Nathan was surprised when he was advised that he was under arrest for the murder of Linda Carmen.
However, the indictment doesn't charge Nathan with the murder of John Chocolos.
The court sides with his aunts and denies Nathan's bail, setting a trial date for October 2nd, 2023. Marty and his team get to work.
The criminal charges against Nathan were dismissed. So in the eyes of the law, Nathan is an innocent man still today.
This is a nautical map. The area that Nathan departed from is right up here. His transit would have taken him down this body of water here. That is the point in which one of the individuals traveling inbound observed Nathan and Linda on the boat. And that was the last time that anyone saw the boat.
With that, we started looking into John Mello.
John Mello took her child to Italy without any communication to Christina about their intentions. He and Christina's daughter moved to Italy permanently.
While Christina Parcell did not have full custody, she had visitation rights. She decided to attempt to get her child back through the Hague Convention.
And Christina Parcell knew that the only person who had possession of these photos of her was John Mello. And they were taken when they were dating back in 2010 or 2011, when she was much younger. And there was also included in there a photocopy of an escort site. And it was claiming that Christina Parcell had been posting on an escort site as a prostitute looking for business.
None of the photos were connected to the escort site. They basically took a screenshot of an escort site and then copied and pasted the URL onto some private pictures that Christina and John had shared years ago.
These packages all came from Greenville or Tennessee. And so we knew the person who sent them out or who put them in the mailbox and prepared them had to be living in the Greenville area. John Mello was in Italy.
There was no evidence that suggested that Christina was a prostitute or drug dealer or escort.
We still were looking at Mr. Mello and people that he knew. But we did know that he's not the person that walked in the front door and killed Christina.
Rarely do you ever get to see the bad guy walk through the front door before he engages in a horrific murder.
And so he just continued to give as much information as he could to 911.
Bradley Post was extremely cooperative. And when was the last time you just spoke with her? Oh, that'll tell you exactly. He said that he spoke with Christina that morning.
They texted, and then he attempted to call her with no answer, which is the reason that he came to the house. And by looking at his phone, as well as Christina's phone, we were able to confirm that he was, in fact, telling the truth. Because normally when she leaves somewhere, she'll send me a text or something on my way back, and I didn't hear from her.
In addition, the way that he was dressed and the way he appeared, in pristine condition, freshly showered, in a sports coat, a white shirt, slacks. Not somebody that had just committed a horrific murder.
Well, the first camera was actually right here behind you. There was a ring doorbell camera.
So that camera, it shows a person walking up the steps and going into the house.
We were extremely lucky. The ring camera across the street was highly sensitive to cars driving by. And a white Ford Explorer drove by at the exact moment that the individual was walking up the stairs and through the front door of the house at exactly 9.15.
That's right. We were able to enhance the video. You can actually see the gray sweatshirt, the black pants, the build of the individual, an individual walking up through the front door, getting ready to commit a horrific murder.
We continued canvassing the whole neighborhood and came across some cameras that showed someone wearing the same type clothing, same stature, leaving the area.
The next evidence we have of this individual is a ring camera down the street, and it shows an individual on a black bike dressed in a black sweatshirt, black pants, with a N95 mask over their face, leaving on the bike at exactly 9.27.
We believe that the suspect was in that house for about 12 minutes.
Then at 928, we see the same individual passing a house in the exact same clothes on a black bike.
They were wearing dark clothes. It was a nice day that day. Long sleeves, pants. It was just odd. And it was our first real clue.
After we found the cameras in the neighborhood, Bradley Post was ruled out. The build wasn't the same. It was pretty obvious that Bradley Post's stature does not match the stature of the person that went into that house.
We were able to determine that Bradley Post could not have committed this crime.
So finding the person on the bicycle was a tall order.
And then when law enforcement arrived, Bradley Post is standing in the driveway of the house. So he talks to Deputy Chris Robinson with his body camera on. Hey, man.
The rose petal case was just a wild ride. So many twists and turns.
We still felt with the child custody dispute, there's motive.
Where Zach Hughes began inserting himself into this custody battle.
It was as close to a Matlock moment as you're going to get.
The ring camera across the street that caught the suspect going into the house was huge.
It was pretty obvious that Bradley Post's stature does not match the stature of the person that went into that house. And John Mello was in Italy at the time, so we know he's not the person that walked into the door.
We still felt like we need to talk to people that know him.
He's not the one that killed her. But from the information we had with the child custody dispute, we just felt like there's motive there.
We learn that an individual named Michael Manigault worked for John Mello to clean his house.
So we found Mr. Manigault and we spoke with him.
He goes on to tell us that Zach Hughes cleans John Mello's house with him. At that point, you start looking into Zach Hughes, find out who he is.
Master Deputy Wolf, he did just a basic internet search. There's a YouTube video of Zachary Hughes.
We're able to learn that he in fact owned a gold Ford truck.
And that bike matched the exact description of the bike that we had on the ring cameras of the individual leaving the Canebrake neighborhood.
Felt like I just won the lottery. With all that information, we really honed in on Zachary Hughes as our main suspect.
We get a search warrant for Zach Hughes' residence where he's staying. When we all get there, it's almost like Zach was waiting on us. He comes out calm, puts his hands up, and he backs up towards my direction, and I put handcuffs on him. Anybody else in the house? Yes, sir.
I set him in the back of Investigator Wolf's car, and he stayed there while we executed the search warrant.
The bike had been washed or cleaned before we were able to locate it. It was an absolute pristine condition.
Why would Zach Hughes go kill somebody for John Mello? And if you do that for your friend, you must either be a really good friend or a really scary person. Do you think I could talk him into doing something like that for free?
Zach began doing yard work, just odds and ends around the house to help him out.
The DNA results came back as Zach Hughes' DNA was under the fingernails of Christina Parcell. And so as a result, we were able to get a warrant for his arrest. And he makes the decision to turn himself in.
He just sat there. He wasn't rude, but he just had no emotion.
John Mello had a problem. He had a custody problem, and Zach Hughes solved the problem for him.
intends to prove that Zachary Hughes did, in fact, murder Christina Parcell. Typically, in opening statements, you want to lay out a little bit of a roadmap for the jury. Christina Parcell had been going through a very tremendous child custody dispute with John Mello. Zach Hughes began inserting himself into this custody battle at the behest of John Mello.
And the evidence will show that Zach Hughes is a cold-blooded killer. The state calls Bradley Post.
Good afternoon, Mr. Post. Where do you currently reside?
Child pornography is extremely prejudicial. Nobody in America thinks that that's okay. But the purposes of us being there was to determine whether Zach Hughes murdered Christina Parcell. When you arrived, what did you do?
When you saw her on her back, was there a lot of blood around the room? Yes.
When John Mello left for Italy, they began using WhatsApp to communicate with each other. After Christina Parcell was able to retrieve her child from Italy and return back to the United States, their communications increased by 10,000%.
Yes, sir. This is a message from John Mello. It says, harass of her, 5142. We can the out. I believe he's providing Christina's phone number, which ends in 5142. He's saying, harass of her.
We were reviewing the G-mails of John Mello and Zachary Hughes. And inside was an email that came from Mullen Investigations, which we believed to be John Mello, because we couldn't ever find Mullen Investigations, and included two of the photos of Christina Parcell in a state of undress that were found in those envelopes.
October 13th, 2021, that did research on Music How Go. At 2.53 p.m., the message reads, phone over, tell you, good, the, I'll. The question John Mello asked about how the music research was going, to me, I thought they were speaking in code for killing Christina.
The cherry on top was the DNA evidence. Zach Hughes had no business being in Christina Parcell's house that day. They had no prior relationship, and his DNA under her fingernails slammed the door on this case.
You're going to hear that this was done for a just cause. We didn't know exactly what he was going to say and how he was going to do it and for what purpose.
It's extremely rare for a defendant to get up there and admit to killing somebody in cold blood, almost as if he was doing something for the sake of humanity.
Something I've never seen before. I definitely thought that whoever killed her brought those flowers in.
That was his third sort of outburst, I believe, which I was able to strike from the record. We don't know the circumstances surrounding Christina Parcell and her child and their relationship with Brad Post. And as far as this case is concerned, it does not matter. Assuming it's all true, Christina Parcell doesn't deserve to die the way that she did.
Zach had never met Christina. The only thing that Zach knew about Christina was what he got from John Miller.
I was shocked and insulted. It was as close to a Matlock moment as you're going to get.
It was as close to a Matlock moment as you're going to get.
We learned that she was a vet tech and that she was engaged to be married to Bradley Post. And the other residents of there were her sister, Tina Parcell, and Christina Parcell's daughter. Son of a .
I was incredulous to the absurdity of his statements that he is going to sit there and decide when somebody gets to live or somebody gets to die based on his own personal judgments. That is absolutely absurd.
This is the opportunity of a lifetime for a prosecutor. I have the ability to cross-examine a confessed murderer, but you have to understand the position that I was in. Zachary Hughes was stating things on his direct examination that he was ordered by the court not to say. The battle in his mind was telling this jury information that they had no business hearing.
And so I came up with a strategic decision to ask one question. Commissioner Hughes, when you dragged Christina Parcell across the floor of the front room where you killed her, did you drag her by her arm or by her ankle?
That's all the questions I need to ask this, Your Honor. And I left Zach Hughes with the inability to say what he really wanted to say.
But just because Zachary Hughes' heart is so cold and so dead that it can't be angry, that is not a defense. Vigilante justice is not allowed in this state. The evidence is absolutely overwhelming. I'm going to ask you to find Zach Hughes guilty.
There's a lot of deputies, investigators already here.
So it was very unique. First of all, you don't have many murders that are stabbings. You also see rose petals scattered around in the room where she's at. Something I've never seen before. I definitely thought that whoever killed her brought those flowers in.
That was something that crossed our minds, especially with the rose petals on the ground.
This was no ordinary murder because the nature of the crime was so close and personal, so brutal, that either somebody was really mad at this particular person or something went terribly wrong. Obviously, the first person that you want to talk to is the person that discovers the body. The fiance of the person is definitely someone that we want to talk to quickly.
So Christina Parcell had a very quick interview at a local veterinarian clinic. We actually have a video of the interview. It did not last very long.
And then she drove back and she returned back about 9.07. And we know that because she passes by a ring camera three doors down and we see her car pass by.
You hear some of the best music you would hear anywhere in the world. It is a wonderful place to come and raise children. It's a very safe place.
And luckily, we're able to solve the vast majority of our homicides. We have one of the highest clearance rates in the country.
So one of the first things we do when we get there is secure the crime scene. Once it's secured, we call our forensics unit to come. With Christina, we collected her fingernails. We swabbed her hands. Anywhere that DNA could have been left. Once her body is removed from the scene, we can really start searching that house for any clues and really kind of figure out what happened.
He was calm. You know, he wanted to be helpful.
I remember him putting on gloves. He had on gloves when he showed up. He just said he was trying to be careful.
This isn't your typical murder that you see.
We talked to other people who were at the service, and he didn't say any nice things about Tony, that he was more angry that there was an investigation. And in fact, at one point, he said to somebody, Tony had to go and get herself killed on federal lands.
I talked to the Bertolais several times. They maintained contact with Harold to keep an eye on Haley. They wanted to make sure Haley was OK. But they also were giving me updates on Harold, and they felt that that was a way that they could help in the investigation.
We talked to the nannies. One of the nannies told us that Harold and Tony didn't sleep together, that they had separate areas where they slept. He had an office in his basement. But occasionally, he would also go on business trips. And he would go on these trips, but he wouldn't have luggage. And then he would just kind of show up the next day.
And the nanny was wondering if Harold was having an affair. He seemed to have a secret life. So all right, let's find out what we can about his business.
We couldn't find any concrete evidence of his work. There was no online presence, and almost everybody has an online presence of some sort if they have a business, especially if you're a fundraiser. on his business cards. Harold had CFR, certified fundraiser, and there is actually an agency that issues that certification. So I contacted that agency and they indicated no.
We have no idea who he is and no, he's not a certified fundraiser. Oh my gosh, he doesn't even have a business.
The consistent theme was Harold's first wife died in similar unusual circumstances. You gotta look into it. Remote locations, odd places, why were they there in the first place? Harold was not injured in any way in either of these incidents, but his spouse was killed.
Very religious. She and Harold married fairly young. Never had any kids. He really wanted a child with Lynn. We also learned that he was very controlling of his relationship with Lynn. Was the control a red flag for you? Absolutely, because he drove the relationship.
Harold claims that he was driving the road And the right front tire seemed spongy. So he pulled over to change the tire.
There's two types of jacks involved in this incident. One is a regular car jack. The other jack was a boat jack, which is basically a tube with another telescoping tube that comes out of it. not safe for a car. His story is that this car jack, this more stable one, didn't work, so he used a boat jack to jack up the car.
So then he said he had taken the lug nuts off of the wheel, and he said that Lynn had a cloth in her hand, and he handed her the lug nuts. He pulled the tire off,
His version was that Lynn must have dropped the lug nuts and gone to crawl under the car to get the lug nuts. Because there were lug nuts in the photos of the scene.
There were lug nuts under the car. And then he said he went to the back of the Jeep and he tossed the tire into the back of the Jeep. and that when he did that, it dislodged the Jeep. And he heard a scream, and he said he ran to the front of the vehicle, and he could see that the vehicle had dropped and was laying on his wife.
I was given the Lynn Henthorne case to reinvestigate in January of 2013. I discovered in the documentation one of the first witnesses on scene. When I called her up, I said, can you think of any reason why a detective from Douglas County would want to call you and talk to you? And her response to me was, that lady, I still have nightmares about that.
We were trying to pull in elements of Lynn's death into our case.
When Dave Weaver was assigned to the case, he opened it up as a possible homicide. And he was looking at is that even physically possible for someone to crawl under a car to get lug nuts and then have this jack collapse?
So one of the versions that Harold gave lands here six feet away from the Jeep. He takes the tire, he walks to the back, puts the tire to the back. Whatever he did caused the Jeep to fall off the jack.
If I was Harold, who allegedly had a bad back, you wouldn't just pick the tire up and throw it in. But that's what he said he did, right? So I'm going to pick the tire up, which is pretty heavy, and I'm going to throw it in. Okay, didn't do anything, didn't knock it off. Realistically, if you were gonna put a tire in a jacked up car, you probably wouldn't throw it in.
That makes a lot more sense. That's something Harold could control.
Our conclusion is Harold could have actually released that bottle jack and it could have lowered directly onto her very rapidly. Releasing it down is the most controlled.
We're not proving that Harold killed Lynn, but we wanted to introduce Lynn Henthorne's death into our case of Tony's as a precursor to killing Tony.
What was really important to me was for Lynn's family to know that the death certificate had been changed. So they would know that Lynn was still remembered and that she wasn't forgotten.
I felt like my relationship with Harold got closer. I had gotten cell records, and one of the individuals that kept popping up in a cell record was Grace Rochelle. Harold and Grace texted and called each other all the time before Tony died. And we had to ask the question, was Grace his paramour? Is this why he killed Tony?
Within days of Tony dying, the park received a letter about Harold's first wife, Lynn Henthorne.
A man having one wife die is tragic. A man having two wives die is suspicious. So we started questioning, did he have a mistress? Did he have another family somewhere?
At that point, I had gotten cell records, and one of the individuals that kept popping up in a cell record was Grace Rochelle. So Grace Rochelle was Harold's former sister-in-law. Lynn Rochelle, his first wife's brother's ex-wife.
But Harold and Grace texted and called each other all the time. We had to ask the question, was Grace Harold's lover? Is this why he killed Tony?
Grace sat with us for five hours and talked with us. We pretty quickly determined that she was not Harold's paramour. Grace was concerned about her children's financial future and Harold said, I tell you what, why don't you get in an insurance policy and we'll make the girls a beneficiary.
And then we dropped the bomb on her that Harold never canceled this policy. The policy had Harold Henthorn as the primary beneficiary. Her daughters weren't mentioned at all. And the policy was $400,000. I said, that can't be possible.
When we looked at Lynn's death, we found there was $600,000 that he received. But then we saw over time that Harold had taken out several policies also on Tony that nobody seemed to know about. The year that they're married, he takes out a $1.5 million policy on Tony. Then he takes out another $1.5 million policy in 2005. In 2008, takes out yet another $1.5 million.
So we're seeing this pattern of building up her net worth, so to speak, if she were to die. At the time she died, how much was she worth dead? She was worth dead $4.7 million.
Both women were described as extremely loving, Christian women, successful, strong women, but at the same time, very controlled by Harold.
After Tony moved to Colorado, Harold started controlling her communication with the family.
OK. Well, Merry Christmas, if any of you flew in last evening from Denver, Colorado.
Tony's mother said this wasn't the first time something bad happened to Tony.
The Henthorns had a cabin up at Grand Lake. They had been up at the cabin, and it was late at night.
It's a small one-story cabin with a fairly sizable deck that goes to a sloping area. There's a broken light. Harold was outside on the deck and he called Tony to come help him.
Her story to the medic is that there was a broken light and she was picking up the broken light bulb when her husband threw a piece of wood over the deck.
The final outcome was that she suffered damage to her cervical spine. I really believe that was his first attempt at murder.
As an investigator, you're looking at this, you're like, what else is he capable of? And that's what we really needed to dive into. So we needed to do a presentation to the United States Attorney's Office to see who we could get assigned to the case. And it was at that time that we got assigned Sunita and Valeria.
And I said, look, you guys need to come up to Rocky Mountain National Park and see the scene. So we hike up Deer Mountain, and then we start going off trail.
His story that he told the Rangers is they went off to have some romantic time.
And then we wander through the woods and then we get to the lunch spot. And they had the aha moment. They looked down that rocky slope and they said there's no reason for Harold and Tony to be here.
And so we realized we were going to have to do a search warrant for his house.
There were tax returns, which were very interesting to us. I'm a fundraising consultant.
He had posed for almost 20 years as somebody he's not and worked really hard at it.
Friends and family told us that once Tony had Haley, it was almost like Tony was a third wheel in that family.
It has some really eerie similarities. The information that we did piece together from his childhood was little bits and pieces from friends that did speak with us.
We were concerned that his relationship with Haley was almost to a point of obsession.
So Harold knew that we were investigating him, and he had told people that he had a bag packed for when he got arrested.
These checks that Tony would get for oil and gas, Harold would deposit them. And at one point, Tony's father found out that all of the oil and gas checks went into Harold's account. And he confronted Tony with it. He's like, why don't you have your own account? Why don't you separate your finances from Harold? And that spurred Tony to open up her own bank account.
And she actually took the next checks. And she deposited them. Harold was not on that account. I thought to myself, she's about to leave him. Our theory is that Tony was starting to pull away from her. And if Tony were to ever leave him, it would all come out financially that he didn't have a job, that he had been lying, and that he would probably lose custody of Haley.
And we think that that would have been absolutely unacceptable for Harold. And we think that was the motivating factor to kill her then. The money. The money and control. Motive started solidifying pretty quickly.
When he was wooing her online, some of the things that they talked about was that they both wanted children. It's a Christian dating site, so they were both Christian.
I had a big pile of cell tower information as well as call information. And I gave that pile to Johnny. I said, try to figure out where Harold was going on these business trips.
We had to strategize on what circumstantial evidence would be key to our investigation.
Well, people want direct evidence, right? They want to see that it's an absolute. In a homicide case, it's even harder to show a jury circumstantial evidence and have them come to the conclusion of homicide.
The judge agreed that, yes, Lynn's death and the beam incident, the similarities are too strong to be ignored.
We showed the autopsy photos of Tony because he never mentions she's got a massive head wound and that she's bleeding out profusely. And so we wanted to ensure that the jury understood that there's no way he could mistake the injuries.
We're looking at the jurors' faces and they had the aha moment.
Craig Truman didn't bring in any witnesses. He just cross-examined.
All of this is to get justice for Tony. Justice for Haley. And it's a really, really satisfying moment.
I believe that putting Harold in a position where he cannot control anything is great punishment for Harold. He robbed Haley of a mother.
Now we have a fatality investigation we have to conduct. And the first thing we want to do is document the scene.
There's a tree that on one side, the branches had been kind of knocked off or broken off. I called the impact tree. You can see that was in a place where I imagine Toni probably impacted as she fell to the ground. There were small things that didn't totally add up. There's an obscure area, not a place where I would expect your average hiker to just happen across because it was just so steep.
I noticed there was a shoe that was there, an untied boot. Usually, in the course of a fall, shoes tend not to untie themselves.
And there was a really key piece of evidence. Tony's camera was destroyed, but the SD card was still intact. We were able to look at the photos, and these pictures are very important to us, because these are the last moments of Tony Henthorne's life.
Ranger Farradion made arrangements to go to Harold Henthorne's house and interview him, because there's still a lot of questions we need to ask.
The pictures were extremely important to the investigation in terms of building a footprint of what they did that day. So this is them in front of the Stanley, which is a big hotel in Estes Park the night before. The next morning, they had breakfast, and then they went and picked up some sandwiches. But you can see Tony's in the car. She's got her lipstick on. She's looking happy.
This photo is them at what we've dubbed the lunch spot. We know that they had lunch there. It's a very key spot to the investigation. What Harold had told Mark was they hiked up till the trail plateaued. They wanted to get off the trail for some privacy. When we recreated their steps, there's no trail where Tony and Harold had lunch. It's not cleared in any way, and it's pretty difficult hiking.
Tony's camera was destroyed, but the SD card was still intact. These are the last moments of Tony Henthorne's life.
We were actually able to determine that this is indeed where they did have lunch. That is a very distinct rock feature with a very distinct dead tree in the photos. And there's a photo of Tony and Harold sitting right where I'm standing. The lunch spot is a very beautiful spot, and there's really no reason to go any further, however they go further.
We know that this is the spot that they stopped because there are several photos of Harold Henthorne standing right on that ledge with this death grip on this tree because it's a sheer drop on the other side of him. 15 minutes later, there's another picture of him, identical, but he's wearing a blue denim shirt.
This photo, you're actually looking up from where her body was recovered. This is 160 feet. This is where Tony fell.
I was taken aback by the size of her head wound. She probably would have bled out very quickly. Never once did Harold mention in any of the 911 calls that she was bleeding.
What's interesting on this map is there's an X and it says hike.
It's in the gray right there. That's almost exactly where her body was found, where that X was. There's a lot of things here that don't add up.
Our theory was that he was trying to lure her to stand where he is, that he's saying, look, honey, this is safe. You can stand here.
When you saw the autopsy report, what did you think? I was taken aback by the size of her head wound.
One of the things that was very suspicious was Harold's story that they stopped at this cliff ledge and that he received a text message from his nanny saying that his daughter had just won a soccer game and that out of the corner of his eye he looked up and Tony was gone. Very specific moment in time. And we realized that, well, that text message came in at the same time that he called 911.
911, what's the address of the emergency? Hello, my name is Harold Henthorne. He told Mark it took him about 45 minutes to get down to the bottom of the cliff where Tony's body was, and then he called 911. We know when he called 911 and when that text message came in. And those don't match up to his story. He then subsequently starts making more phone calls.
He calls Barry Burleigh, Tony Henthorne's brother. He is a surgeon.
Harold never says she's got a massive head wound, never says that she's bleeding out, none of that, just that she fell and is unconscious.
In the autopsy photos, her lipstick was intact. I've personally done CPR and it's extremely messy. And you don't end up with intact lipstick like Tony did. So Harold's texting with Barry while he's allegedly helping his wife, while he's telling people that Tony has fallen from a cliff. He ended up receiving and sending over 90 texts that night.
I've been doing this 15 years, and it was pretty gruesome.
First thing I noticed was the rose petals everywhere. I thought that was kind of weird. They were just kind of all over the floor and no particular, not a pattern. It was just kind of everywhere. This is weird, dude. There was also a chemical odor and just a lot of blood, a lot of blood.
I couldn't tell at that point.
You could tell there was a struggle inside the house at some point.
What was the second offer?
Of course, obviously you understand when something like this happens involving a spouse, obviously, you know, you've seen the news, you've seen deals when the wife that was missing, you look at your husband or vice versa, but the wife, if the husband's missing, I mean, let's start with their inner core people, family, friends, all that, and then start working their way out.
You rule all them out first to make sure.
Something happened in there and that body and that room is going to tell us a story. And it's going to give us a historical picture of what happened in that room.
He wasn't wearing a mask and he didn't appear to be concerned about confronting them in public.
Did he have gloves on, do you know? I don't know. Did he have anything peculiar about his walk? Did he have a limp? Do you remember if he had any tattoos or scars?
Number four.
Camille, hold that move.
You don't remember me. You don't remember my daughter. She looked just like me.
So when you found out about George, did you, uh... When I found out about him, I got really scared. I got really scared. What'd you think then? I was thinking, okay, George is dead. You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm.
Well, they're matching up even less now.
So if Lisa tells me that you know more about who shot Kevin than you're letting on or that you're telling me, is Lisa lying or telling the truth?
So Lisa says, ask Shelby, ask Shelby. Shelby knows.
Well, why is Lisa telling me that, Shelby? Why? Why am I getting all these different stories from different people? What the hell is going on? And she actually also then agrees to a poly. See, Shelby was one of these, I'm the smartest people in the room kind of people. And so no matter what I threw at her, she agreed to it.
Because she was going to show me who was going to win this little chess match we were having or whatever.
This is how cocky she was. We were standing there looking at this car. And Shelby says to me in the parking lot, she knows there's no video. She knows there's no tape going. She knows it's just me and her. And she says to me, you're never going to solve this. And I said, let me tell you something, Shelby. I am going to solve this. And when I'm done, you're going to be in prison.
Let's write a letter as if it was written by George. So I sit down and I write a, like, to whom it may concern. And I kind of just put down my theory along with the information I've received from people. Like, so I put something like this in the letter, like, if I wind up dead, here's what happened. And I decided I'm just going to show them the letter and see if anyone bites.
Terrence was the weakest link, in my opinion, and the one that was more easily manipulated.
Terrence was just sweating and getting really nervous. And Terrence just lays out everything for us.
He tells us that on the day of Kevin's murder, he was at Shelby's house. Lisa was at Shelby's house. George was there. Everybody was there. Joe, George, everybody. Lisa and Shelby left the house. They went to Big Five Sporting Goods and bought ammo. Came back with the ammo to the house, and he saw the ammo. He saw a gun sitting on the table. The ammunition was absolutely 40 caliber.
When you went over to Kevin, I want to make sure I have this straight. You were sitting where? I was sitting in the back seat.
What Terrence ultimately says when he knows his back's up against the wall finally, and we show him this confession note, he says, okay, okay. I drove to Kevin's with George and Joe, but Joe was the driver and George is the one that got out. George ran inside the house. I heard shots fired. George ran out, got in the passenger side, boom.
He just went all over the place with where he was that night. I want to say it was like a three-hour interview, and nothing was consistent from the beginning to the end. He changed his story two, three times. I mean, nothing was consistent.
He confirms that Lisa and Shelby are having an affair. He confirms that Shelby is the mastermind behind all of this. Shelby told Lisa to sleep in the kids' room, told Lisa to leave the door unlocked when she went to bed. Shelby provided George with the gun.
Where are you at? I can come pick you up. Where are you at?
Well, I'm going to be honest with you. It's a distinct possibility. I will give you the opportunity to talk to me, but then I'm going to have to make a decision. You understand that? Is that fair enough?
I've talked with Terrence quite a bit. In fact, he's still down here.
And what I was talking to him about was the night that Kevin was killed. And Terrence pretty much came clean and told me what happened. So I need you to tell me, just like Terrence did, what the hell went on that night. And be honest with me, Joe, because I've got a story.
Shelby was afraid that when George was arrested and talked to his attorney, that he spilled his guts because George, quote unquote, talked too much. And she told Joe and Terrence, listen, If George talked to his attorney, we're all screwed. So you're gonna help me. We're gonna get rid of George now. They make George sit up in the front passenger seat, Joe sitting right behind George.
They drove out to this rural area. Shelby is there and meets them in a separate car.
They start arguing about George keeping his mouth shut. You know, he's telling Shelby, my attorney can't say anything. They get into a huge argument. George gets back in the car, sits down in the front passenger seat. Shelby's still standing outside. Joe's still behind him. Joe has the gun out now. And Shelby says to Joe, this mother****er. And Joe brings a gun up, puts it to George's head.
Deputies respond out to the very east end of Moreno Valley to a dead body that's found.
One shot to the back of the head.
They take George out of the car, drag him over to this little ravine, leave him there. And Joe takes George's boots off of his feet because they were Joe's boots, not George's.
So she makes Joe give George his brand new pair of boots, Timberlands, that he had just bought. And Joe was pissed. And so when they killed George and Duffin, Joe takes his boots back. That's why his feet were so clean.
They would do whatever she told them.
Like I said, we've been talking to quite a few people. We talked to Shelby. We talked with her last night. We've been talking with her today.
And I'm telling you, I know exactly what happened in both instances. This is your opportunity to tell your story.
George is laying on his stomach. His hands are out, fully extended and above his head. I mean, it looks like he was dragged there and then, boom, left exactly how he had been dragged there and laid.
This would be a really good time to tip to that side of truth and honesty. And when you tell me your story, do not lie.
You don't remember that. No. I explained to you the importance of being honest, correct? Correct. Okay. So you understand that? Yes. All right. So you are going to sit here and look me in the eye and tell me that Shelby did not make the statement, this is the night we're going to do it. Right. She didn't say that. No. And she said that she's going to say it to me.
Yeah, both of them lying. So she says, okay, you know, I think I'm just going to go ahead and go. So I say, okay, well, you're under the arrest. You're under arrest for Kevin's murder. And she has her purse with her. And she's keeping this purse on her lap and hands on, very hands on this purse. And through this whole interview with her, I'm thinking, why are you hanging on to this purse so hard?
You know, now I want to look in the purse. And so I search her purse, because now she's under arrest, I can search her purse. And I find notes, a notepad, and there are notes that are being clearly two different handwritings, notes that are being clearly this note has been passed back and forth.
Lisa. Stop telling me you didn't have a relationship with Shelby. I didn't have a sexual relationship. There is no one else in this room. It's you and me right now. You need to start being honest. You wrote that. It's your handwriting. I know it's your handwriting. It is my handwriting. All right. And you were writing it to Shelby. So I show that note, and I said, well, what's this note?
And I show it to her. And Lisa, oh my God. That was all Shelby. I mean, if you want to know the truth, Shelby basically raped me. Yeah, we had sex one time. I was not a willing participant. I was a victim here. I've never been attracted to a girl before. I thought, you know what, Lisa, I don't care. She forced herself on me. Not forced herself on me. It was like, come for me.
She knew what I was going through, Kevin, and she was comforting me. Okay. And what, one thing led to another?
But it happened before Kevin died. Shelby, Shelby, Shelby, Shelby. Now she is turning on Shelby big time. And yeah, I do think Shelby had Kevin killed because she wanted to be with me, but I was no way I was ever going to be with her. So I take the opportunity and say, well, great. If this is all Shelby, let's put a wire on you and you call Shelby right now. And here's what I need you to say.
And she won't, won't, won't. And then finally, I said, yeah, okay, you know. I mean, you can go down for this by yourself or you can take the people responsible with you. I don't care.
And then here's the other interesting thing. So he's muddy. I mean, his clothes are muddy. His face is completely muddy. Everything's muddy. Except for his very white socks on his feet. They are white as can be. It's like, okay, someone took his shoes. Why? Why?
No, I'm by myself. We put a wire on her. She calls Shelby. And Shelby's not really biting, but... before Shelby completely ends the phone call, Lisa says to her, you know, to the effect like, you know, Shelby, I'm really getting worried. And, you know, I don't know what you did. And I don't know what you did to Kevin. And she's getting these out.
And Shelby says to her at one point, you know, Lisa, I don't know what you're doing. And I don't know where you are. But you better remember we're in this together.
I got you. I told you, Shelby, this day would come, did I not?
Once they're incarcerated, they weren't in the same cell, but they continue writing letters to each other, Lisa and Shelby now. But they write them in code. So the letters are coded. And their love letters to each other and how much they love each other and they're still going to be together. And that was the whole thing, you know, was to be together.
And so, you know, they just had to get through this trial and be found not guilty. And then their day would come kind of thing. And so it was all about being together.
They were all found guilty. Lisa, her sentence was 25 years to life. She is now out on parole. And Shelby and Terrence both got life without parole, and they are both still in custody.
The single most question, and from day one, everybody that I ever talked to about this case says, why didn't she just divorce him? She's worried about her reputation. She's worried about what her parents think. Her parents were pretty religious. Her and Shelby having an affair was never going to fly. With her family, with her friends, with her kids, with anybody.
It's just the background she came from.
I can definitely say that this is one of the most memorable cases. And I would say probably the one that I'm proudest of, really, because there was no evidence. This was truly... detective work to me. This is what an investigation should have been. It wasn't send some DNA swabs off, send some foot impressions off.
It was myself and my partners working together and just keeping at it like every single day until we solved it.
George's mom refers to as Shelby's gang. And so Tina is the one who puts George, Terrence, Joe and Shelby as this little gang that are doing criminal activities together.
She knows there's no video. She knows there's no tape going. She knows it's just me and her. And she says to me, you're never going to solve this. And I just looked at her and I said, let me tell you something. I am going to solve this. And when I'm done, you're going to be in prison.
And so I don't know if this is what his mom has picked up from him, what he's told her, or if it's actually true. But the one thing I do know is the four of these people are hanging out together. And someone else was driving that car that took George away from Kevin's house. And so good possibility it's Stelby, Terrence, or Joe. Now I've got two more people that are possibly involved.
So you read about the shooting the next day in the paper. Yeah. Did you ever talk to Shelby about it and ask her, hey, you know, what happened or anything like that?
I go to the Motel 6 and show them a picture of Shelby. You know, have you seen her? Did she rent a room? Well, we've seen her, but she's not the one who rented the room.
Who broke into the house? I don't know who broke into the house. All I know is I thanked my husband a shot, and I did not want to go look. I did not want to look. It was very execution style. I mean, it was clear, pillow over the head, shots into the pillow. He was clearly sleeping. We're 48 hours in, and I know that unless we get someone to talk, I don't think this is going anywhere.
So I decided at that point, well, let's just see what Shelby and Lisa have to say to each other before I interview Lisa. And so I take Shelby and I say, oh, you know, Lisa's in this other room. You want to go and talk with her for a minute? Lisa and Shelby are supposedly best friends. They've lived next door to each other for a very long time. I've heard from Kevin Jr.
and neighbors how close they were. And so when I bring Shelby into the room, I'm expecting what I would do with my best friend. Like, oh, my God. Big hug. How are you? What happened? What's going on? You know, whatever.
Shelby walks in. She sits on the other side of the room from Lisa. They give each other a hi or hello or something. That's it. And then they sit in total silence with each other. Complete silence.
And they just sat there, and I watched them on tape for, I don't know, it was probably 20 minutes or more. And they just sat there staring at each other. But it wasn't just staring. Like, it was, I don't know, there were a couple head nods. There were some looks. It meant something. In my mind, it's like, I don't know, they're communicating somehow.
Whether they were having an affair, which was my first guess, or whether something else was going on, I don't know. And so in my mind, I immediately went to, OK, you know, we're going to really interview these two.
And her theory was... that Kevin was into dealing drugs, that he sold marijuana, and that this was one of his dealers had gotten angry at him, and he had been arguing with him back and forth over the phone, and she felt like one of them was responsible for his murder.
I thought that was interesting because I don't hear many people throw... their beloved people under the bus quickly, you know? They're usually very protective, especially if they're dead. Like, they don't want you to know anything bad about them.
Me and her are friends. That's it. Okay. If she's bisexual or she's doing her own thing, that's on her. She's never tried anything with me. She knows I don't like women like that. I like women as a friend. A sex thing, no. I had Kevin. That's all it was.
But you knew deep down, somewhere deep down inside yourself, that Shelby had something to do with that? This isn't some stranger who walked in your house and killed Kevin for his marijuana, is it? And now she starts turning on Shelby a little bit. She's saying stuff like, well, we never had an affair, but I do think she had trouble with Kevin.
I'm just saying, if she was my friend, why would she come into my life and do this to me if she was my friend? My life was fine.
Kevin was going to leave you.
Well, that's what he told his mother, and that's what he told his brother. Kevin was about to split up with you.
Because he was pissed off about Shelby and the time that you guys spent together.
So now tell me what you know about George's murder. I don't know anything about George's murder. What has Shelby told you? She hasn't told me about anything about George's murder. You guys haven't talked about George being killed? Nope. I mean, we talked about like, I mean, she didn't go to his funeral. Right.
Follow me here. Why did Shelby want George dead? Exactly.
It's actually something we had to consider in how to pitch this to a jury.
I was sitting in my family room watching the evening news and a spot came on about a murder. I mean, obviously, we were all speculating what happened.
As you might recall, Steve Lapham saying, I don't know where we heard this, but he was murdered with a .22 caliber bullet to the head, which is a very mafia-type way of doing it.
So the word was out that we were investigating this fraud involving Corvette Company. And he basically said, come talk to me.
Did it stamp down on this type of activity? Did it save the industry's reputation?
If you are convicted of fraud like that, you can lose your license, you can lose basically your way of life, which for a winery, that's the kiss of death.
Did he speak to any of his siblings before the end?
Yeah, you are getting better at finding those free slots, so that's great.
On one call, I asked Robert, There's so much tragedy involved with what happened, and I'm just wondering if you've ever thought about how things might have gone differently. Do you see a parallel path where there could have been reconciliation and everyone could have come back together?
So I asked Wayne Peterson, What was the thinking behind she should be implicated in this murder?
To this day, do you have any idea if he had funneled money down there?
We are giving you an opportunity... to come clean here. And I see how uncomfortable you are because quite frankly, sir, you should be. These texts were not from your wife from somewhere else. These texts originated from within your house. How does your missing wife text you and her sister from the confines of your home when she allegedly went missing several days before that?
And if you can answer that question, then I will let that go.
What do you think happened? I don't understand. I mean, you come, car's missing, 10 minutes you're out, car's there.
No, no, which is fine because couples go through that all the time. We just are wondering about the car. Where do you think she went? She walked down the street. She decided to just leave the car and walk down the street?
You need to be honest with us right now.
Anita's roommate, Nicole Thomas, was at work when police asked her to come to her apartment. Now a crime scene. She said she'd been away most of the weekend at her parents' home. She was in tears when they asked her about Anita.
They talked to Nicole one more time that night, and she mentioned a dance club that Anita liked.
When you talk to people here, especially the people who were in the same building, what are they telling you? Do they hear anything, see anything?
And no one in the complex seemed to know Anita all that well. No one except an old high school friend, 20-year-old Tyler Schmoltz, who had an apartment close by. Police found him hanging around outside Anita's apartment that evening. Like everyone there, he said he was just trying to find out what happened to her.
He told police he had recently spoken with Anita, so they questioned him in the crime van.
Tyler took Anita to prom when she was new to high school. They had stayed close for years.
Police would have more questions for Tyler down the road. But at that moment, they got busy bagging evidence. Anita's hair, clothing items, and a pink sheet from her bed to send out for testing. As they did, the story of a well-liked young college student killed in her own bedroom was becoming big news.
There was one person who might. Sergeant Goodman found his name on Anita's cell phone. On the last night of her life, she had been texting with a man named Michael Vann right before she was killed. So who was Michael Vann?
I want to ask you, just from the very beginning, when this first happened, how major was this news?
Kim Fundingsland was born and raised in Minot. He covered Anita's case, first for the local TV station and later for the Minot Daily News.
While some were riveted, Anita's family and friends were frozen in place. Was this a scary time for you?
Meanwhile, investigators began piecing together a picture of what happened in Anita's final moments. Looking through her phone, you saw some text messages that caught your eye.
This story is about a young student away at college, killed in her own bedroom, and about the family and friends who never stopped pressing for answers.
And while they regularly texted, he told police it had been a while since he'd actually seen Anita.
Anita and Michael often ran into one another at a local downtown dance club, where he said Anita never met a stranger.
A few days after Anita's murder, Michael visited Minot PD for a second interview. Police drilled down into his relationship with her.
Michael and Anita's texts in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 3rd, ranged from the mundane to the personal.
Anita's final text messages with Mike were just before 5 a.m. She asked about his past relationships. Anita wrote, how do you move on after being engaged twice? That's a huge life-altering thing. He responded, you never move. You just become jaded. Hope that you find someone who will love you for you.
Michael said he had been texting Anita from a friend's house and he stayed there the rest of the night. Police told Michael he was free to go for now. Two days after Anita's murder, the medical examiner released the autopsy report. Was there any sexual assault?
But the autopsy did reveal something that piqued their interest.
Hmm. When you think about those details, does that sound like possibly someone she knew, a complete stranger?
And as Minot Police continued talking to those close to Anita, they got a promising tip.
It was a man running near Anita's apartment. He appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s, about 6'2", 200 pounds, with dark hair. And there was something more. The witness said there was a stain on his shirt, possibly blood. It was their first big lead. Now they needed to find the running man. Maybe it's running away from a crime scene.
About two days after Anita Knudsen's murder, police were chasing a new tip. A woman said she saw a young, dark-haired man running right near Anita's apartment around the time of the murder. And he looked like he was in a big hurry. So she's thinking maybe it's not running out for exercise, maybe it's running away from a crime scene.
Minot Police released the running man description to the media, and it did generate some tips, but none of them went anywhere. Back in Anita's hometown of Butte, her presence was everywhere. And on one particular day, her friends honored her with a brilliant burst of light in true Anita style. There was an outpouring of love. in Butte after Anita died.
It's where Anna Knutson spent much of her late childhood, raised with her brother Daniel and their older sister, Anita. What was it like living there in a place that small?
When Anita's friend Lauren arrived from California, she was blown away.
Were you surprised to see the whole town just painted pink for her?
And on the day of the funeral, the entire community gathered to say goodbye. What stands out to you the most about her funeral?
To her funeral. Yeah. Yeah. Was that a way of feeling close to her?
Yeah. But in the midst of the grief, there were suspicions, rumors about who could be involved in Anita's murder. time, did you remember any whispers about who it could have been?
Police had also been hearing things about Anita's roommate, Nicole.
Police were there, at the funeral, watching from their car as mourners arrived. At the same time, they asked Nicole to come in for another interview later that day, a move that may not have sat well with her mother. Anita's friends remember a painful exchange between Anita's mom and Nicole's.
But the dust settled and the memorial moved on. And a very close friend took over, Tyler Schmoltz, the young man on the scene that first night. He was now in the middle of Anita's goodbye.
What kind of pictures did you want to pick of Anita?
He also took it upon himself to arrange a send-off with pink balloons.
Through it all, police wondered if the killer was among the mourners. And they had some very particular questions for that close friend, Tyler Schmoltz. Three days after the funeral, Tyler found himself once again talking with police.
She was the victim at the heart of this case, but investigators were learning she was so much more. By all accounts, Anita Knutson was magnetic.
That's what you do when you're the mayor's kids. Yep, yep. Anna's big sister, Anita, left for college in nearby Minot, a bustling big city by North Dakota standards. Anita's aunt, Karen Lear, lived there too. How excited was she for college?
Police learned she was an object of admiration and more than a few crushes. But she also knew how to fend them off.
So what if someone loved her and she didn't love them back? When you think back on that time, did you have anybody that you thought...
Like Anita, Tyler also went to Minot State after high school. Tyler Schmaltz actually lived in the same apartment complex as Anita.
I mean, just proximity alone, does that make you take a closer look at him?
Tyler always seemed to be in the center of the tragedy. He was on the scene the night Anita died. He helped plan her funeral, launched a Facebook page in Anita's honor, and police say he checked in with them. A lot. He seemed, in their view, almost too involved. If there's somebody who's calling... Sometimes it may be a little too much, right?
Like wanting to know too much about the case or that can cause you to raise your antenna of why do they not want to know so much? Did you get any of that with Tyler Schmaltz?
So it really kept him on your radar because he kept calling and pushing for information. Yes.
You knew Tyler? Yeah. Knew him as your sister's prom date? Mm-hmm. What did you think when you heard his name come up? Did you think that he could have been involved?
Even a prom date? Yeah. 11 days after the killing, police asked Tyler to come down to the station for another interview. And this time, their questions were more pointed.
He seemed to have a real romantic interest in Anita, but she kind of friend-zoned him pretty quickly.
Had you been down to the station before?
But their questions went far beyond generic.
Were you ever bothered by the fact that she didn't like you or didn't want to go out with you?
Tyler says he didn't find those questions particularly alarming. Did you ever think that maybe they were looking at you?
Were you ever nervous during those interviews?
She kind of friend-zoned him pretty quickly.
Tyler told police he was at home that night playing video games. He gave them that DNA sample. And after the questioning, they let him go for the time being. How long did Tyler remain a person of interest?
So they weren't done with Tyler Schmaltz, but there was someone else they wanted to talk to. And a fresh set of eyes would join the case. Could they finally crack it?
When Cole Justice came to town, word spread very quickly.
Since 18-year-old Anita Knudson had been found dead in her off-campus college apartment, police had been working around the clock, talking to possible suspects, but so far, none had panned out. Then, about a week after the murder, John Klug, a patrolman at Minot PD, responded to a call about a man who'd entered an apartment and was hiding in a bedroom closet.
So when Anita's family didn't hear from her one weekend in June 2007, they figured she was at work, at least at first. Saturday passed, then Sunday. Was it out of character for them to not hear from Anita? Very much so, absolutely. By Monday, with no word from Anita, her dad Gordon made the hour-long drive to his daughter's apartment to check on her.
The responding officers noticed the man seemed dazed, out of it, perhaps intoxicated. And then they made a discovery.
Klug realized this M.O., a man with a knife who'd broken into an apartment, could match the profile of Anita's killer. Police identified the man as 17-year-old Devin Hall. A potential new suspect was welcome news to Sergeant Dave Goodman. What do you come to learn about Devin Hall?
Then Goodman got some intriguing information he needed to run down.
And this is someone who knew Devin Hall, had worked with him in some capacity.
And it was enough, she knew enough about him to say, I hope he's not involved.
You don't say that about somebody unless you think they could possibly be involved. Right. Sergeant Goodman didn't delay. He, along with an FBI agent, crossed the North Dakota border into a remote corner of Montana where they got in touch with one of Devin's relatives.
So you have someone who's saying, oh yeah, that murder weapon, that was ours. That was in the family. Yes.
it was time for Goodman to go see Devin Hall. He was being held at a juvenile facility after his arrest for trespassing. Investigators wanted to know when Devin had arrived in Minot. He said he got there by train on Sunday, June 3rd, and met some friends.
And this was on Sunday the 3rd? Yeah. Okay.
Investigators believe Anita died in the early morning hours of June 3rd, just after she sent that final text to Michael Vann. And while Devin did admit to the trespassing on June 11th, he said he had nothing to do with Anita's murder.
But investigators thought he fit the bill, so they pushed harder.
He readily admitted, oh yeah, I have something like that.
Devin Hall recognized the knife that killed Anita. But Sergeant Goodman says something wasn't right. Devin Hall was so cooperative, Goodman says, he started having second thoughts about him as a suspect.
In a sense, his honest reaction did him a favor in this case.
Goodman continued talking to Devin's friends and family about his whereabouts the weekend Anita was killed. One of them was actually taking home video during Devin's time in Minot.
When he peered through Anita's window, he saw her lying face down in her bed. The apartment manager let him inside and immediately called 911. Is this a police department?
Investigators believe that video placed Devin's arrival in Minot on the evening of June 3rd, after Anita's murder. So he's got video backing up his alibi.
Sergeant Goodman also went back to Montana, where he met with Devin's family member again, who told him the knife didn't belong to Devin after all.
Goodman believed that the knife used to kill Anita was not Devin's. That once promising lead now felt like a dead end. At that point, that was your strongest suspect, and now he's cleared. Where do you go from there?
The investigation, that once had momentum, slowed to a near halt. But not for long. Remember the running man?
If there's one thing Minot Police did not lack, it was tips. In the year after Anita's murder, they tracked them down by the dozens. But as they looked into possible suspects, there was a lingering question. Who was that running man seen by Anita's apartment around the time of her death?
In a last-ditch effort to find him, police released a sketch.
He agreed to take a polygraph and give a DNA sample. Police later concluded he was just out for a jog that morning.
It was another unfortunate dead end in a case that seemed to be slowing down. Even the DNA found on the murder weapon offered no help.
And all those other items sampled at the crime scene never led to a forensic profile of the killer. Investigators were growing frustrated.
Are you starting to think, my sister's case may never get solved?
As years kept passing, the police were fighting against time. Investigators retired. Witnesses left town. The maintenance man from the apartment complex, Marty Annell, died by suicide in 2009. And Michael Vann, the guy Anita was texting right before her death, passed away that same year. Just the sheer passage of time was taking away people who possibly knew something about this. That's correct.
Police came to believe that Marty and Michael were not involved in the murder, and the same went for Anita's friend Tyler. Police learned he'd been playing those video games with a friend, and he struck investigators as genuine.
What did you think of him? A well-meaning person. So there were a lot of people who were pointing at you.
As possible suspects fell away, it did little to ease the suffering of those who loved Anita. Not for her friends, her family, and especially not for her little brother Daniel. One day, in the spring of 2013, six years after Anita's death, her sister Anna got a call that would, once again, shatter her life.
Zach was Anna's then-boyfriend, now-husband.
Right away, Anita's dad called his sister, Karen. He said, you've got to come here. He must have said she's dead. When she arrived, police were already on the scene. So you drive up to the apartment, and the only thing that you know is... That she's gone. Anita's gone. Right. I can't imagine, Karen, him coming to check on Anita and being the one to discover that she had been killed.
Her beloved brother, Daniel Knutson, was gone at 22.
Did you see the change in him after she died?
Anna and her parents buried her brother in the grave right beside Anita's. The family couldn't help but feel that whoever killed Anita took Daniel, too. Do you believe that Daniel...
You felt that this killer struck your family twice. Totally. For Anita's family, it was too much. They refused to let the killer take any more from them. So they doubled down and brought together a small army of family and friends. There were always things we thought we could do.
Tyler and Anita's Aunt Karen set up billboards around Minot and Butte.
So it became almost a cadence every year.
The newspaper blurbs, the media interviews, of course that's a way to keep Anita's memory alive. But for you guys, was it also a way to kind of signal to Minot Police, hey, we're here? I definitely think it was. Keep some pressure on them?
And that's when Tyler got an idea. Invite the true crime TV show Cold Justice to Minot. So you'd seen them come in, come into towns, take a case that had been seemingly forgotten.
Tyler and Anita's other friends started a petition in 2015 to convince cold justice to take up Anita's case. You got more than a thousand signatures on that.
It would take nearly seven years, but cold justice would come to town. Maybe this cold case would finally heat up.
In 2020, John Klug became the police chief in Minot. Anita Knutson's case had been so cold for so long, he knew it needed a jolt.
Klug assigned two investigators to take a fresh look. Then, the real jolt.
In 2022, Cold Justice, the investigative crime program on our sister network, Oxygen, offered to help with Anita's case. Klug said yes.
When Cold Justice came to town, word spread very quickly.
Cold Justice spent more than a week with Minot Police. Together, they went over the case files. They brought in witnesses, with both Minot Police and Cold Justice doing the questioning. And they put people back in the hot seat, like Anita's high school friend, Tyler. You would never do anything like that, though, would you?
When you got there and saw him, how was he?
Along the way, the double investigative team of Cold Justice and Minot PD got a bombshell tip. A man named William May came forward. He said about a year after the homicide, a woman he dated confessed to killing Anita.
And who was William dating at that time? Anita's roommate, Nicole Thomas.
Police and cold justice went through the files and learned the roommates were fighting about a lot of things. Anita's alarm clock, Nicole's aquarium. Amber Nix said she heard all about it.
The tension was reaching a boiling point.
So they were getting ready to split up, move out.
Then there were the text messages between Nicole and Anita in the months before the murder. In one, Nicole wrote, And that just obviously didn't get the point across. Amber also remembered Nicole making an odd comment after Anita's body was found.
Karen stayed on the scene as Gordon left to break the news to his wife and the rest of the family.
This wasn't hard proof of anything. And Nicole didn't seem to be living the life of someone weighed down by a violent secret. She still lived in Minot, was a wife, a mother to a daughter, and was close to her family. But still, in 2022, police and the Cole Justice team wanted to question her again. And she agreed.
Did you ever tell them the iPod was missing?
If someone told you you were at a party with William and you said you killed Anita, would they be lying?
Nicole sensed law enforcement had heard a lot of stories about her that she said unfairly suggested she hurt Anita.
Investigators came to doubt Nicole's alibi. At first, she said she'd spent all weekend with her family, miles away from Minot. But according to police, her story kept shifting. At one point, she spent Saturday night watching a movie with her mom and sister. At another, she'd gone to a bar to see her cousin.
Nicole insisted she didn't have anything to do with Anita's death.
After spending nearly an hour at the station, Nicole was done.
Nicole walked out of the station, but Minot Police weren't done with her yet. Armed with the information from William May, they presented their findings to the Ward County State's Attorney. The case against Nicole might have been circumstantial, but the prosecutors felt it was enough. With cameras rolling, Anita's family gathered.
Cold Justice captured the big moment, the moment Anita's family had been awaiting for nearly 15 years. A Minot police detective became emotional when she shared the news.
A few days later, Chief Klug made news of the arrest public.
The next day, Nicole appeared in court virtually from the local jail.
Anita's family felt the state's attorneys had a chance to set things right, but it would take years for Anita's case to finally see a jury. And when it did, it would be an all-out fight.
It was pressure from a TV show. They put an incredible amount of pressure to bring charges in this case.
It was late March 2025, but winter still had a grip on Grand Forks, North Dakota. That's where Nicole Thomas, now Nicole Rice, was facing possible life in prison for the murder of Anita Knutson. It had been three years since her arrest. Anita's little sister, Anna, was now 32 and bracing for the horror of, once again, hearing the details of her sister's murder.
Yeah. You felt you were being there for her.
Prosecutor Tiffany Sorgen opened on a poetic note.
To get a conviction, the prosecutors had to convince the jury that only Nicole Rice had the motive and the opportunity to kill Anita. First, they took the jury back to that terrible day by calling Anita's 80-year-old mother, Sharon, to the stand.
Oh, all the time, it seemed like. Daily almost. Sharon remembered how she couldn't get Anita on the phone, how she asked her husband to go check on her.
Anita's 90-year-old father, Gordon, relived that moment on the stand.
Prosecutors then turned to an essential question. Did the killer get in and out of that apartment with a key or through that slashed screen? They showed the jury an experiment conducted about a week after the murder. Minot Police made an identical cut in a new screen and then tried to climb through it without tearing it further.
And the mystery of who killed Anita was only just beginning.
The state suggested that cut screen was staged, a killer's attempt at misdirection, and that the killer got in and out through the door with a key. Laura Knapp, the apartment manager, testified the door was locked when she let Anita's dad inside.
Prosecutors told the jury that only four people had keys. Anita, the apartment manager, Marty the maintenance man, and Nicole. Throughout the trial, there was an elephant in the courtroom, the Cold Justice TV show. The prosecution had to address it because the defense certainly would.
So the prosecution asked the most recently detective, Sergeant Carmen Asham, to clarify the program's role in her investigation.
No. Sergeant Asham told the jury how thoroughly her own team had investigated possible suspects and then cleared them, and how Nicole's inconsistencies about where she was the night of the murder led to her arrest.
What's more, according to the sergeant, Nicole was less than honest about her feelings toward Anita.
In fact, a witness testified that Nicole blamed Anita for killing her fish just a week before Anita was killed. Nicole's own aunt, Brenda Glintz, testified that Nicole's hatred for Anita continued after her murder.
The aunt admitted to the court that she didn't want to be there, but she testified, under subpoena, that her niece said something that seemed to put her at the scene of the crime.
No, I didn't, bro. I married a man. It was pressure from a TV show. They put an incredible amount of pressure to bring charges in this case.
The screen and Anita's body were in fact gone by the time police brought Nicole to the apartment, so her comments to her aunt were significant to investigators.
Nicole's old boyfriend, William May, told the jury what he had told Cold Justice and Minot Police, that during a party, Nicole had actually confessed.
Then another witness testified to almost the same thing, that after a party, Nicole had confessed to her.
The prosecution argued, with all the evidence, there was only one possible conclusion.
But defense attorneys would have something to say about that. They would argue that the investigation was a mess and the presence of a TV show made it even messier.
You're going to hear a lot of evidence in this case.
Right from the start, defense attorney Rick Sand made one thing perfectly clear. The evidence the state had presented against Nicole hadn't changed much over the years, although something did reignite the investigation in 2022, and it wasn't exactly evidence.
It was pressure from a TV show, a nationally syndicated program that came in, worked with the Minot Police Department, didn't dig up anything of substance, but put an incredible amount of pressure on the state's attorney's office, the police department, to bring charges in this case.
Piece by piece, the defense worked to take apart the state's case, like the theory that the killer had to have a key and didn't go through the window. The defense suggested that for months after the murder, detectives like Robert Barnard were saying the opposite.
You speculated that someone exiting through that window had caught the curtain and the curtain rod.
The defense suggested some witness accounts changed over the years, like that from Nicole's aunt, for instance, who testified about Nicole's hatred for Anita.
Do you recall saying you had some health issues and you have some memory loss?
Now, are you aware in these interviews you've had with Detective Asham, you didn't say anything about Nicole saying Anita deserved to die? This is the first time we're hearing that. Are you aware of that?
You have memory loss, correct? That's what you told the detective?
David Goodman, a newly minted detective with the Minot Police Department, had a lot to think about as he made his way to the apartment where Anita Knutson was murdered. The sudden, unexplained death of a promising young college student was virtually unheard of in Minot, North Dakota. So as you're on your way to the air, what are you thinking?
When it came time to cross-examine Sergeant Asham, Rick Sand challenged her competence, her integrity, and her judgment, suggesting she ignored viable suspects developed by the first investigators.
Had you read in the reports that they were concerned he was obsessed with Anita?
Yes. Tyler didn't hear any of this. As a possible witness, he was barred from the trial.
And then came the heart of the defense case, to show the jury that the partnership between Cold Justice and the Minot Police Department had skewed the investigation toward Nicole. To do that, the defense called just one witness, legal consultant and former FBI agent Doug Coons.
He said those were minor inconsistencies that came from multiple interviews with Nicole spanning 18 years. And Kuhn said the Cole Justice Minot PD investigation ignored a suspect that was staring them right in the face.
Devin Hall, he was the teenager who arrived by train around the time of the murder. He had a record for burglary and was currently incarcerated.
You said Cole Justice came in for 10 days, correct?
What day did you guys interview Devin Hall on those 10 days?
We did not. That was a big omission, according to the defense. And remember the running man tip that surfaced early in the investigation?
A local guy had identified himself as the running man, but he was just a jogger. The defense argued, what if another man was out that night, running away from the murder?
The expert also disputed Devon Hall's alibi, that police believed a videotape showed him arriving by train after the murder.
As for the witnesses who testified that Nicole actually confessed to them?
William May said he reported all of it to police in 2008, but investigators testified they had no record of it. All in all, Kuhn said, the state's case was flimsy.
His withering critique was just what the defense felt it needed. The question now, would the jury buy it? After six days of testimony, it was time for the jury to decide whether the mystery of who killed Anita Knutson would finally be put to rest. Was it, in fact, Nicole Rice? Did she enter Anita's room in the wee hours of the morning and stab her roommate to death? Ryan Chandler was on the jury.
On that early evening in June, Sergeant Goodman knew very little when he arrived at Anita's apartment. So when you got here to the scene that day, what did you see?
Or, as the defense had argued, could someone else have killed her? Jurors began their deliberations, and as the night wore on, the seriousness of the decision weighed heavy.
As he watched the case unfold, Ryan was able to eliminate some of the possible suspects the defense put forward, like Michael Vann and Tyler Schmoltz. And he had trouble believing some of the prosecution witnesses, like William May, who gave testimony about Nicole's alleged confession.
Jurors went through the evidence and talked about the case for four hours, well into the evening. Finally, they called it a day.
We, the jury, duly impaneled and sworn, find the defendant, Nicole Erin Rice, not guilty. It was an unbridled, some would say, unseemly show of joy. A victory. And for Anita's family, a complete gut punch.
If someone told you you were at a party and you said you killed him, would they be lying?
Nicole and her defense team declined our interview request. They issued this statement. When the verdict was read, we reacted emotionally. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended, especially to Anita Knutson's family. The loss of Anita is heartbreaking and we in no way intended disrespect. The prosecution and cold justice also declined our interview requests.
Our attempts to reach Devin Hall went unanswered. You worked this case for more than a decade. You know the information, the evidence, in and out. And at the end of the day, no one has been held responsible for Anita's death. Is that tough to swallow?
That's been hard for some people to accept. Tyler Schmoltz, for instance. Anita will forever live in his memory. He can't forget that magical prom night when she did something so unexpected and so kind.
The bedroom window caught his eye. What did you notice about her window? I noticed that the screen was gone. An important detail that remained to be seen. As police began processing the crime scene, Anita's father, Gordon, had begun the grim duty of telling his family. Anita's 15-year-old sister, Anna, got the news from her brother.
If you close your eyes and think of Anita, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Do you feel that there are pieces of her still with you today?
Those pink balloons may be long gone, but those faded pink ribbons still dot the streets of Butte. A lasting reminder of an unsolved murder and a tribute to an unforgettable young woman.
Finally, he spoke the words. Anita was dead.
Daniel was also taking it hard. I understand that Daniel and Anita had a very special relationship. They did. They were very close. Gordon and his wife Sharon adopted the three siblings when they were all very young. They spent their early childhood in sunny Southern California.
Lauren Lessig and Anita became forever friends in kindergarten. What was it about Anita that just really drew you to her?
Then, when Anita was almost 14, Gordon decided to move the family up north to his hometown of Butte. Your dad comes in and says, we're moving to North Dakota.
Amber Nix met Anita when they were freshmen in high school. Even at that young age, she thought Anita was perfectly put together.
Anita was always moving, school, hanging out with friends, dancing. She joined a future business leaders club. And here she is doing a weather report for a class project.
Larissa Rao loved Anita's can-do, generous spirit.
After high school, it was on to college in Minot, about an hour from Butte.
So she majored in elementary education at Minot State. After a semester in the dorms, Anita and one of her roommates, Nicole Thomas, decided to move off campus.
Anita's apartment had become a crime scene. Those who knew and loved her gathered outside, brimming with questions for police. And police would have questions for some of them about Anita, her life, and the people who surrounded her.
The quiet apartment complex where Anita Knutson lived was now a tangle of police activity and crime scene tape. What did you need to know about this apartment?
There in a bedroom, clothed in a pink bathrobe, he saw Anita's body still on the bed.
So it didn't seem like there had been a struggle.
Anita had been stabbed in the heart, and the evidence suggested she was killed Sunday, the day before. Then, right by Anita's bed, investigators made a key discovery. A knife with a distinctive tribal insignia on one side. There was blood on the blade, and testing would confirm it was Anita's. Investigators gathered more evidence, like the missing screen from Anita's window.
The maintenance man said he had taken it to be repaired earlier that day. It had been slashed.
Is that how the killer got in? Or did someone come through the apartment door? That door was locked when Anita's father tried to enter, so if someone came in that way, they would need a key. This wasn't a sort of lock that you could maybe pick or get in from another way. You needed an actual key.
A key to unlock the door and re-lock it on departure. Four people had keys to the apartment. Anita, her roommate Nicole, the manager, and that maintenance man, Marty and Nell. Police spoke with him that first night.
into the same room where Anita lay dead. He said he didn't look in, but he did call out. No answer.
The town is mostly quiet now. Just a few stores line the streets. But ride through this small North Dakota community and you'll see them. These weather-worn pink ribbons and a faded photograph of a young woman no one here can forget. Reminders of what this place has been through, of a mystery that spanned nearly two decades. You talk to police? All the time. All the time? For the whole 18 years.
just in those first initial hours, was he ever a person of interest for you?
Something to consider as police dove into the investigation. Are you learning more about Anita while you're there at the scene?
These text messages that you deleted, and you know what I'm talking about, because you even told somebody, hey, my phone's clean.
You delete your text messages. Yeah. Okay. And apparently you deleted some yesterday before you showed up. That was way earlier. No, that's not what these text messages that you deleted. And you know what I'm talking about because you even told somebody, hey, my phone's clean. So why don't you tell me about that?
I smoke weed and I just don't want that. That's the only thing that would be in there.
We have to bring them back in time to 2011 because, you know, in 2011, there weren't ring cameras on every house. You know, smartphones weren't as prevalent.
We wanted to lower their expectations on the type of evidence they were going to see.
The jurors were listening to his lies in the statement, and then they were seeing the objective evidence, which we argued was uncontestable, the forensic evidence, video surveillance, etc.,
Why would someone bring Rob Cantor down into a basement bedroom and then murder him execution style? We focused on motive, his relationship with Sophie. That was very important.
Evidence of stalking, fake email accounts. You could see the evil. You could just see it.
Obsession, anger, desire for vengeance. It's really only pointing to one person.
He had received approximately $40,000 worth of guns, but he had yet to receive the remaining $40,000 in firearms that he purchased.
Through the gun collector, we were given another name of an individual who ended up being an investor in Natalie and Michael Cochran's company. And we spoke to that individual next.
With Michael deceased, she was still the only one linked to the business, and she was still running that business.
She was still running that business. We didn't want to take the chance of her destroying records.
At the time I started looking at this, there should have been around $20,000 in the account, but it was down to $30-some dollars and some change. I immediately noticed that there were issues with what the money was being spent on, different personal stuff that appeared to be stuff that had nothing to do with baseball.
TJ Maxx, Olive Garden, various different ATM withdrawals in the neighborhood of $500, $600 a piece.
We had a team that was going to execute a search at our house. We had a team that was simultaneously going to a business.
The business began as a pretty legitimate business model. They were in a position to where they could have legitimately bid on government contracts. The only problem was they never bid on any contract with the federal government.
This was an attempt to find out if she had kept any of that money or spent it on something that nobody knew about and she was going to try to sell it. It was the fishing expedition to see what we could find.
She was selling some stuff that belonged to Mike, wire and stuff from his business. There was just miscellaneous dolls, different stuff around.
She's got somebody there that's possibly buying the stuff that she has out there. She just speaks nice to him while he's looking at him. As soon as she turns around, she looks like it's killing her to talk to him and makes these faces. And it's just very strange.
The money's gone. Yeah, there was a tremendous amount of money. The circumstances became more and more suspicious.
It just confirmed that we had the right guy.
Correct. I think you have bad facts in almost every case. So those are just hurdles that we had to overcome by other circumstantial evidence that we had.
I am not the person asked to explain the criminal psychology of one's mind that convinces them that they need to kill two little girls. I don't think anything in his past would justify or explain why he did this.
My openings are always very, very short and very, very to the point. I would rather just keep the jury kind of on the hook.
He went out to the trails that day. He laid in wait. He then saw the two girls, forced them down the hill with a firearm. We believe there's a sexual assault that was going to occur. And then we believe he got spooked and he decided to kill them. He left the crime scene and continued on with his life.
The bullet to me was huge because it tied Richard Allen to the crime scene where the girls were found. Racking the gun in that situation would be such a powerful statement that if you don't do what I say, I am going to shoot you or I am going to hurt you. And so we just believe that was how he was able to control the girls with this firearm.
I agree. In her dying moment, she had to wear with all to pull that phone out and take a video and help solve her own crime.
There's always that fear they're going to say that. But we had in our minds what we want to identify as bridge guy and then tie in that Richard Allen is bridge guy. That was our strategy from day one.
We believed he was on the trails from 1.30 to 3.30 like he had originally said in 2017. In 2022, he changed that from 12.30 to 1.30. McCleland also played Richard Allen's voice in court.
When you heard that, did you think, game over? It just confirmed that we had the right guy.
What can we confirm in that confession? He said he saw a van. Let's start looking around. Were there any vans in the area? a local man named Brad Weber took the stand. And sure enough, Brad Weber was coming home from work that day, and sure enough, he was driving a van.
Yeah, it was. We felt that way. We felt that only person that would know a van went down that private drive on that day would be the two girls and the killer.
Without her, we would not be here. Without her, we would not have an arrest. A conviction and a sentence.
She had to wherewithal to pull that phone out and take a video.
Did you want to just say, let's go somewhere else, right? Let's just drive to Mexico or something.
Did either of you ever think maybe he did kill her? Not even once.
Did it make sense to you that she would commit suicide?
And to the best of your knowledge, when Mr. Rossi was returned to the United States, did additional DNA testing confirm that he was in fact Mr. Nicholas Rossi? Yes, sir.
They have him captured on film shooting another human being.
And so consequence becomes the biggest issue now for him.
After you drew the bathwater, what was your intent? What were you about to do? This morning. What time was it that you got out of bed this morning?
And who in your household was awake at that time?
What were you trying to accomplish when you did take your children's lives?
God would take them up to be in heaven? Is that what you mean? All right. And if you had not taken their lives, what did you think would happen to them?
And where did they end up? In hell. In hell. What sort of things did they do which showed you they weren't right?
Didn't obey you when you told him to do things? All right. You mentioned their manners before. Can you give me an example of their manners?
Be disrespectful?
Okay. Now, you concluded that they were not righteous, and you're a religious person, and explain to me what you meant by not being righteous.
Alright. So you concluded that the TV had this special message for you and your family.
Danielle, do you want us to leave any stuff in here? Holly, have we...
Did this have anything to do with the custody dispute? Because that's what some relatives had told us.
Tonight, police in Aurora have arrested the brother of the man accused of shooting and killing four people at a home in Aurora. Police say that Juan Castorena is facing a charge of accessory to first-degree murder after the fact. He's 18 years old. Police are still looking for his brother, Joseph Castorena. He's wanted in connection with the shooting on October 20th.
The reward for information leading to his arrest is $15,000. If you know anything, you're asked to call Crime Stoppers.
A man wanted for more than a month now for killing a family and a neighbor in Aurora is in custody.
So not very nice.
It would help explain how... Two teens from Wisconsin end up at such a remote location that there is somebody else that's involved, that there is somebody directing them to this remote farmhouse to do this murder.
What we were looking for was anything at all that would tie them to Nebraska or any other location that they were at during their crime sprees.
I had a signed consent form from her saying I could have that phone. Where was it? Right where she said it was, in her little corner of that house where we performed the search warrant.
This was so bizarre. That gives you a mindset of the type of person we were dealing with.
17 years old. What this is telling us with this letter is her motivation, how she's feeling, and that she truly was involved in pulling the trigger on at least one of the people there.
I thought jail was the safest place for this girl. She said she loved killing, wished she could do it all the time.
It depended on the day you interviewed Jessica. One day, she's pulling the trigger and shooting the man above his eye. The next day, Greg did it all. It just was so back and forth with her. It was a very, very difficult time in every interview with her to really determine how much truth she was giving.
Most people thought all this was an easy case, but we didn't have any witnesses.
Your presence here is voluntary. You can go at any time. And all we want is truthful statements because it's a crime to lie to federal officers. Wow, yeah.
Understood. The reason why you got a rash on your arm is because you cleaned his house. The reason why the brand is because he went to the store, bought the brand new tools, and branded you. The reason why your nose was broke is because of a hockey stick. I know all of those things, and I know there was no sex. I know all of that because he passed a polygraph test that said it's not an abduction.
She asked me to come get her.
I rented a car.
I drove up and picked her up. He passed the polygraph test, Sherry. If that's not what happened, what did happen, Sherry?
The DNA doesn't lie. His DNA. His DNA was on you. There's no way. Robert saw you in the house.
There was a reason for her at that point to have a broken heart, maybe have some animosity towards Matthew.
They are just friends. It was a lot of minimization.
The data retrieve told us a lot. It told us his call history. It showed us his location.
There was nothing on her end that would make us look at her as being involved in this.
So the homicide unit went out there and we recovered surveillance video from the time that the cell phone was at this gas station. The video wasn't that good, but it did show Matthew, the passenger of the vehicle, who was definitely a male, and he was taller, get out of the car, come in, and they purchased something. And then they got back in the car, and they acted like friends.
Our main task was to figure out who this random guy is that's riding around with Matt.
He had said that he saw Matt that day, and there was a passenger in the car, and the name he brought up was Nasty Nate. There was no arguments. There was no against anybody's will. It was a friendly relationship.
Our homicide analyst located a subject that lived right in the area of where Matt's phone went dead. Right where one of those breadcrumbs was, was the address of Nathan Ortiz. When we did background on Nathan... He resembled the person that was with Matthew at the gas station. Once we find the identity of Nathan Ortiz, we also learn that he had a girlfriend named Aria.
They live at a house right in the area of where Matt's phone went dead.
We actually made contact with Nathan's parents. They give us statements, and they pretty much tell us that Nate and Aria, his girlfriend, do live there, but they hadn't been home in a couple of days.
Nathan Ortiz lives close to the last location of Matthew's cell phone. And one of the things we noticed is right next door, there was earth that was disturbed. like something was either dug up or buried, and it was recent.
I thought we had found Matt. I thought we had found the people responsible for it. But it turned out not to be the case.
When Nathan and Aria came in that night, it was a lot of minimization. They were just friends of Matthew.
Matt just kind of showed up out of the blue. They went driving, listened to music.
When we get to the part where Matthew gets shot and Aria shoots him, it's very quick. There's no detail in it whatsoever.
Based upon some interviews with family, Matthew had some medical issues with his right hand that would have caused him not to be able to articulate it in a way that at least gave us a clue that Nate and Aria weren't very truthful about the altercation that took place inside the vehicle.
We need the entire truth. But it's the bigger shit, like, when we get deeper into the story. All right? Yeah.
Where do you put him when you pull him out?
After he's buried, um, what happens? Um... I put a couple of trees on him.
There's a lot of theories on why Aria had to pull the trigger that day. One of the things that came up later during the investigation about the motive was that this probably was a setup. Matthew wasn't wealthy. but he probably had access to narcotics. And it's a possibility that Aria and Nathan were trying to rob Matthew of whatever narcotics he had on him.
The first step of a missing persons investigation is, of course, to verify the person's actually missing. See where they were, see where they were last seen. Kind of just do a lot of background information on them.
What happened in the car, it's a mystery. We got to go on the facts. Matthew Collins died in a way that somebody else was responsible for it. And the person who was responsible for it was in the backseat of that car. The only person in the backseat of that car was Aria Armstead.
The car was found abandoned. in an area of Lehigh Acres that's not very populous. It's a dead end with not really any houses around it.
When Matthew Collins was originally reported missing, Francesca had reported her vehicle missing with him.
My reaction when I first saw the car was, we have a problem. We have a missing person, and we have what appeared to be a bullet hole in the windshield in a vehicle that he was less known to be driving.
Matt was known for committing home invasions. He would commonly brag about the amount of money he would get from these home invasions. It would kind of sustain his lifestyle.
After he was in prison, he was a really, really hard worker. His family and even his friends said he was trying to do the right thing.
Francesca herself is a very successful person. She works in the medical profession.
Matt and Francesca were living in Lehigh Acres. He had introduced her to his family.
When we first saw the car and it was all sealed up and looking through the windows, you couldn't really discern how much blood was actually in the vehicle. Once we opened the car up, you could definitely tell something had happened.
It was time to go and look a little deeper at this and the aspect of it possibly being a homicide. This vehicle, it was immediately towed to our forensics facility where everything was kind of done in a controlled environment.
We find out that he was involved in narcotics use and narcotics abuse.
There's nobody in the trunk, but the trunk did have an extreme amount of blood in it.
We had very little to go on. We had a car with blood in the front seat and the trunk and a missing person. And we didn't know, did Matthew take the car and was he involved in some kind of crime? Was he the victim of a crime?
What happened in the car, it's a mystery.
He's got a checkered past that would be concerning to some people. And that's when we find out that Matthew has been to prison before. He got out about a year ago. Yeah. I'd say at least a year ago. We find out that he was involved in narcotics use and narcotics abuse. It was out there that Matt kind of had a temper, and he would not be afraid to fight anybody.
There were a lot of theories at that point. You know, maybe he committed a home invasion. Maybe he got mixed up with the wrong person.
My reaction when we actually opened the door was, we have a problem.
Personally, I don't trust this girl. Francesca, she had kind of made her mind up that something bad happened, and she did talk about it in the past tense a couple of times. That was a red flag.
So the last time Francesca saw Matt was at her house, and he had made the comment that he was going to go get his hair cut at a local barbershop.
So when we were in there the night that we came over, me and Investigator Durgan, where in the basement was he?
I mean, let's be perfectly honest. We had your tower computer.
And I found emails in there from three, four years ago that you're talking to other men saying that, yeah, I'm married technically, but we don't really have anything to do with each other. I mean... I'm sure in your mind it was over long ago.
Oh, right, right. Oh, because he was probably suspicious of what was going on.
The day that he called into work, is that when this happened? Yes. Okay. What happened?
Okay. Did you check his neck at all to see if he had one there?
Was he moving at all? Was he fighting back at all?
Any muscle movement at all? How long from the time that he fell down the stairs until you moved him, do you figure?
I guess what I'm having trouble with is if this was him falling down the stairs, why do we go through all this? I mean, what do we go through all this for? I'm just, help me figure this out.
Well, hang on, the first natural reaction from anybody, I don't care if it's your mortal enemy, is going to be trying to get this guy for some help. The thing that I keep hearing is that you're going to turn yourself in, that... If the first deputy that shows up saw him, you were going to get arrested. This was an accident and none of that happens that way.
It just tells me that if Adam doesn't perish from his injuries, that maybe he tells us a different story about what happened on that stairwell.
When you were taking him out of the house, did you cut him up or anything? Did you need any tools or anything? No. Because if you did, where would those be?
Okay. All right. How long had he been there?
It was your car that you were taking her down to your mom's house in? Correct. His car used at all? No. Or any of it? Okay.
What were you using? Blankets? Rugs? What were you rolling them up in? I mean, what was the biggest piece that you had to get out of there by yourself? I mean, his torso?
And while investigators wait for a positive ID, there is concern tonight that it could be that of a missing 14-year-old Cleveland girl.
Today is Monday, May 17, and it's 10.38 Hawaii time. And we're in Minnesota, which is five hours ahead. This is a video interview of, what is your full and correct name? Michael Wayne Ortiz.
Michael, on May 5th, 1999, we had a video conferencing with you from Honolulu to Minnesota. Do you remember that video conference?
We asked you questions about the Dana Ireland case, and you provided us with information which we recorded on audio tape. Do you remember us doing that?
Is the information that you gave us on the audio tape true and correct to the best of your knowledge?
Do you remember who you got that information from?
Okay. At what area or when did he give you that information?
Okay. Have I promised you or anybody from my office promise you anything in exchange for the information that you gave us on May 5th over the video conferencing? No. Okay. Michael, are you willing to testify in the Ireland case should the case go to trial?
It is now 10.41 and end of this tape recorded session.
I think Linda Opdijk knows more than what she's telling.
The blood on the walls, the blood on the carpet, it told a story of what took place.
I've never seen in my career a case that has as many twists and turns and mysteries as this case with Mark Stover.
Just a big sticking point for the past several months of this case has been files that were seized by the Rochester Police Department's Technology Forensics Unit, and whether or not any medical records seized during that search violated the scope of RPD's warrant. Over nine terabytes of data were seized from Bowman's work laptops, his personal computer, and his iPhone.
Today, the court went over the files seized from his personal devices. Bowman's defense is seeking to find evidence of medical privacy violations and exploratory rummaging. To help prove that, Tara Olson, an investigator with the County Public Defender's Office, went over what she's found so far.
Some of the files she's cataloged include Google Drive and iCloud data, PDFs, and around 20 screenshots of patients' private medical details. The state called a witness of their own, RPD's detective Brock Newman, who was part of the team that conducted the search. Newman argued that using the software tools he had available, it wouldn't have been possible to pull data or analyze selectively.
He testified that doing so would have limited the scope of the search and hindered the investigation.
Thank you.